Thursday 4 October 2007

Tuesday 11th September 2007


A boy's start to the day with a visit to the ruined castle of Vieux Windstein. Built into a natural rock pinnacle, the castle had sheer sides with steps cut into the rock. There were Troglodytic caves at the base of the castle and were also used for the castle rooms. Scrambling over the castle was great fun – Jane returned to the van!
On then to the German border with a quick stop at a closed museum of the Maginot Line with a good view of the defences that were never used. And, finally we were in Germany, crossing the border a little further South than expected – the crossing that I had chosen turned out to be a ferry (not shown on the map) and it had ceased to operate! This explained why the Sat Nav kept trying to direct us away from it.
A very pretty drive down the 'Schwarzwalder Hochstrasse' (the Black Forest High Street) took us from Baden Baden at the Northern end down to Halbmeil between Wolfach and Schiltach in mid part of the Black Forest. The Camping Schwarzwald Halbmeil site (€23 per night) was well placed for visiting the sites in this area and we decide to stay for 3 nights. The site is close to a railway line and during a walk into the village we discovered that the railway provided a very easy and cheap way of visiting the sites. We chose this particular site because, according to ACSI, it had WiFi Internet so I could catch up with emails and attempt to set up the blog. However, blank looks when we mentioned this proved that the reports were grossly exaggerated – they didn't have any Internet access.
Photo - Vieux Winstein castle (the castle is built into the natural rock formations)

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