yesterday afternoon!
So where did I leave off???…. the 3rd stop yesterday, fluffy frosty snow etc etc. Well sooo much has happened since then and I really struggle just to choose one photo, so I’m going to add quite a few more to the gallery.
20.3.18 pm, after our 3rd glorious stop, we head onwards to Triberg, our destination, of which the journey exceeded the place. But that doesn’t mean Triberg wasn’t also incredible, just not quite AS incredible. We drove towards the waterfall, and were stopped rudely by some barriers. We park up next to a frozen lake, ducks waddling on the top (why do they still want to be on the lake when it’s frozen? Leon says). We continue up towards the top of the waterfall on foot. 15 min later, walking on an abandoned road, we see workman’s flashing orange lights, and they say something about ‘Baum’ and gesticulate wildly, as if arms were clock hands! I take this to mean they are felling trees, and we trudge back down, the wind blowing wisps of snow off the boughs, fluttering onto our heads. Not to be defeated, we decide to try to find the bottom instead.
Taking a walk down a nearby single track road besides a very old church, the sign explains that is is the second oldest building, I’m not sure if the is in Triberg, Germany, Europe!! I fail to recall that important detail. But it was very pretty and looked a bit like it should belong in Stratford upon Avon.
The Sun shines through the wooden crucifix, light streaming around his head. I took a few photos for Sue, who I know will like this, and later realise the light streamed horizontally and then vertically. Strange!
We continue down the hill & I spot the Schwartzwald museum, that I had seen on Tripadvisor as a good place to go. It had a slightly abandoned antique collection about it, silent, until some enthusiastic punter slips in €5 to the antiquated machinery (such as the orchestran machine) to shriek out a variety of Bavarian tunes. No staff were there to greet, explain, smile, laugh, & the only faces to be eerily glaring, following us about were from odd looking mannequins, complete with eyelashes, outfits akin to a circus crossed with Bavarian peasants, and plenty of dust.
They had a mixture of items, from bobsleds, to glassware, to plaited straw, to a make shift mine! It was worth a look, but I don’t think I would hurry back.
We then found an old curious looking Rathaus, or restaurant to you and I, and chose some goulash suppe and a cup of gluwein to warm up with. While we warmed, the skies whitened and the clouds started shaking their billowy
flanks, cascading hundreds of fat snowflakes all across the sloshing river, and scurrying pedestrians. Time to get out among it! We see a sign for the wasserfallen (waterfall, of course!) and propel our freezing, increasingly snowy bodies up the hill towards the Lady in the hut. She is surrounded by nuts and this excites me. Clearly squirrels. I eagerly grab a bagful & check with the lady the squirrels will be out in this weather. ‘Ya! Ya! They live there!’
YES let’s do this, I march off up the hill, nuts firmly clutched in my hand, forgetting all about the waterfall (waterfalls are really up there with one of my fave sights too, so that takes a lot!). After a half hour walk uphill, no squirrels. BUT! We do get to a glorious waterfall, gushing and thrusting it’s way over the jagged grey granite rocks, crashing onto the large fallen ones in the stream below.
Stalligtites formed like oversized crystal quartz pendants, protecting and guiding the cascades of water to its rightful next place.
Still no squirrels.
We carry on walking upwards, through a metal barrier which has been moved aside. It becomes very quickly apparent that it is waaay too slippery, so we turn around and ungracefully clamber back down, disguarding the handful of nuts I have ready for any hungry small red creatures, grabbing onto what we could, and placing one foot on the edge of the thin trickle of river that is warming a thin strip of land next to the ice sheet the path had turned into. We see others with proper walking boots on having to do the same, so we don’t feel too bad about our 4 point descent.
Now we need to get back to the car. Snow sodden, and still coming down, we set off for the walk back up the hill. An hour or so later we reach the car, and I’m not sure if it’s the snow, or the ‘glowing’. Who am I kidding, sweat.
We have a 90 min drive back through the snowy conditions.
Naughty Mr Leon scared me on the autobahn and went over 120mph. Apparently it was my fault, as we was going about 80mph (this is slow for the autobahn, and it has no speed limit), and I laughed and joked, as we were overtaken by a Nissan Micra!!! So the foot went to the floor, and so did my jaw. I recorded it, to bear witness to my possible final moment.
*Spoiler alert* We survived, & Leon has suitably been scolded by his Mum and I
21-03-2018