It was still pretty dark and nasty looking when I went and settled up – Euro34 for the beer on the terrace (did I mention that?) wine with the meal and the packed lunch I ordered at about 11pm last night when I realised that today’s walk had no towns or villages on it.
I don’t know what happened to Thannenkirch, but it happened about 20 years ago – business died and hotels (there used to be at least 5 in the village) closed. Now there are 2 hotels and no shops, restaurants or anything – just a load of derelict buildings. The community is trying hard as is the local government (there is a large “site de fete” on the way out of town that doesn’t look as if it has been used for months despite having covered areas and a dance hall). It has got some bizarre carvings though…
I wish it well for the future.
Once out of town I followed the directions and was quickly on a very drippy and surprisingly overgrown GR 5. Somewhere along this trail I knocked the lens cap off my camera and I didn’t realise until after lunch, so I could hardly go back and find it.
The trail lead continuously upward through the trees following the road that was annoyingly close. The place was dripping and rather oppressive. I saw a magnificent snail and slug on the route, but otherwise there was a lot of trees and greenery and dampness…
The huge snail
and here is the slug…
There wasn’t a lot to see, apart from wet undergrowth, and slugs. Lacking anything else to do I listened to my MP3 player having ensured that I had a good supply of fully charged batteries and then I took a photo of myself
perhaps it is just as well there wasn’t anyone else around as I think I look like someone out of “Deliverance” in this photo.
The trail continued upwards and I crossed the road at least 4 times and eventually through the mist I reached the “Chateau du Haut Koenigsbourg”. It had been a magnificent 13th to 16th Century castle that dominated the area. However it fell into ruins and in the latter part of the 19th Century “Kaiser Bill” got his grubby hands on it and got some called Bodo Ebhard to “restore” it. The result is kitch to say the least.
I don’t thing you can see it, but Kaiser Bill had his monogram put on almost everything. Quite what this was doing in the next room isn’t clear…
It turns out Bodo’s rather odd designs were all to do with Kaiser Bill proving to the world (and I suspect himself) that Alsace was German, had always been German and he had a god given right to rule it. Bodo Ebhard lived up to his name (“bodo” in Malay means “stupid”) and he really pulled the place around and added all sorts of oddities including a massive central keep and the windmill – along with thousands of tiny statues of himself – they were both barking mad. Anyway it was a very interesting tour and I was glad to have done it. Having paid up and been charged as a couple, until I told the cashier there was only one of me. I took one of those “Audioguides” which was interesting as it was using CD technology (so last century) and frustrating when it described the magnificent views from the battlements, as all I could see was cloud as a fog had blown in!
Once the tour was over I tried to press on and found myself wandering up and down the road looking for the trail which was said to start “to the right of the refreshment stand”. I finally worked out that the directions meant actually right next door to the stand (which was actually a building). Once back on trail I made great progress as it was down hill all the way. I met a big party of school kids who were almost dropping from exhaustion – I lied and told them they only had another 5 minutes to go, it was more like 15, but I think they would have given up if I had told them that.
Following the trail was usually very simple as usually it was very well marked.
and so generally all you had to do was look for the rights colour and shaped sign tacked to a tree or painted on a rock. However sometimes the marks weren’t visible and in places it was very confusing.
The woods were lovely – a mix of pine and beech with the occasional oak grove thrown in for good measure. I was glad I was going the direction I was as it would have been a hellish climb in the other direction – now I understood why those fit healthy teenagers looked so puffed – I thought it was too many Macdonalds and illicit drugs!
I had been hoping to find somewhere for lunch as nice as yesterday, but the trail was just too close to the road and as a result there were cars in every picnic area, bins and litter. Eventually I found a reasonable spot with only one discarded plastic bottle (I picked it up and later dumped it with my rubbish in a bin later). The packed picnic lunch from the hotel consisted of two baguettes, one ham and tomato and the other Camembert together with an orange and a nectarine. I augmented it with a beer I bought at the Refreshment kiosk and ate myself to a standstill.
As I sat there enjoying myself I spotted a great visual pun…
Mistletoe and pine – geddit?
Just down the trail by about 400 metres was “Vick – the Monkey Mountain” where there was a large enclosure full of baboons that you could take yourself and your small children for a walk amongst them – like Windsor Safari Park without the benefit of the protection of the car – “no thank you”.
But it was incredibly popular and very busy and as a result the trail was very difficult to find. The best thing about the place was the good view it afforded of the “Chateau du Haut Koenigsbourg”
The worst thing was that the excellent signage was suddenly in poor supply and the directions cryptic. I wombled around for at least 20 minutes getting the glad eye from the intersex paedophile hanging out at the kiddies swings on every occasion I passed him/her/it/umm/err. I finally found the trail down a track used by the lovers of caged angry apes as a public convenience. I was surprised at the very short distance people will walk for a pee, crap or whatever. The first 25 metres of the trail was a positive minefield of human excreta but beyond that it was clean, pristine and untouched. The monkey loving hoards don’t like the ‘jungle’.
I pressed on down hill through the forest for another kilometre or so to the next castle on my route. This time the ruin was being used as an “Eagle Centre”. It was highly recommended in the guide so I paid up and went in. They had every kind of eagle and vulture you could think of and the display was good.
There were eagles of all sizes and shapes from American Bald Eagles to Secretary Birds that are surprisingly good at kickboxing as one of the keepers found out when the bird kicked him below the belt (no photo, sorry).
as well as two unscheduled interlopers.
The eagles got a hard time from a wild (figuratively and literally) hawk which dived bombed them and then, what I thought was an eagle, like the ones I saw the previous day. I took a photo with my telephoto lens
but it was only when I downloaded the picture I realised it was a stork.
The show lasted about an hour and afterwards I retraced my steps back to the carpark and then on down the hill. I should have checked the GPS as I would have realised I was doing a huge loop.
As soon as I got passed the castle the trail turned left and I was out in the vineyards again.
I soon passed one of the couples from yesterday who I guess are on the same trail as me. It was a lot hotter in the afternoon and I had to resort to my ‘slouch hat’ to keep the sun off. The great thing about vineyards is the fruit trees that also grow there along the road – I ate a lot of plums as I walked down to Chatenois.
Chatenois looked great from a distance, but up close I was unimpressed – a rather dull high street with my hotel, which was the same grade as the first hotel on this trip, was about 250 metres down. I found my case and was told where my room was, number 13, on the ground floor. It is a big room with a huge double bed which is a nice change from last nights cot.
According to my GPS I walked 15.81km.
The Google Earth picture is a bit difficult to see, but here it is anyway...
If you want to see my trail in Google Earth then click here and download the .kml file.
My new walking boots are showing why they were so cheap – the soles are now wafer-thin and I feel every rock. I decided to see if there was a shoe shop open go buy some insoles, and perhaps a camera shop too (to replace my lens cap) – no, but I did discover that the back streets of Chatenois are as charming as the other beautiful Alsatian villages I’ve stayed in (Thannenkirch excepted). There was even a fortified church and a gate tower with an occupied stork nest.
Having done with a walk around the town I decided the sun was definitely over the yardarm. The hotel doesn’t have a bar so I headed down the street to a nearby hostelry and discovered to my delight, as I had taken my p.c. with me, that someone nearby was silly enough to leave there WiFi network unprotected. I managed not only to read my email but send some too. I also managed to upload about half my photos before my battery ran flat and I had to head back to the hotel.
Dinner was served at the front of the building. There at a table by the door was the couple from the trail I waved and said hello and they waved back before I settled myself at a small table away from them (British and Dutch reserve). The waitress started off in German, but I told her politely in my best French that I was English (though I could understand her German) and that she could talk to me in French. So anyway I had ‘Tarte flammand’ – a local speciality (sort of pizza) followed by a chicken quarter in a mustard and mushroom sauce with home made noodles (not seen them since Austria). I had a ‘demi pichet’ of a wine purporting to be Tokay – it was nice, but it wasn’t what I would recognise as Tokay. Myrtle tart afterwards and then back to the room to finish this…
To view all the photos from today visit my Fotki website.
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