Yesterday Jane spotted
that the town square was to be closed from 07:00 this morning
although we couldn't establish why. Thinking that it would probably
be a market, we decided to investigate. We arrived to discover a very
small funfair under construction – quite a disappointment! However
that gave us the opportunity to start our walk a little earlier than
anticipated.
There were two walks
and two maps of the locality on large boards in the car park of the
campsite and on the way into the town there was another board
detailing a mill walk. This looked interesting but the complete walk,
in a figure of eight, was very long so we opted for the bottom circle
of the figure of eight. Packing a picnic and wet weather gear (it was
warm but still grey and threatening) we set off. We climbed the hill
of Hainberg (524 metres) behind the campsite and found a small
ancient monument on the top. We had been getting withdrawal symptoms
from lack of archaeology so it was good to find some. The walk then
took us through the forest and a riot of fungi. In England it is
quite unusual to see the pretty Fly Agaric fungi, also known as the
Magic Mushroom, but we saw many hundreds on this walk. They look very
pretty with a colour that can vary from a deep red-orange to almost a
buff and every shade in between. There are often a number of them in
a group in varying stages of development – an orange,
white-speckled ball bursting through the forest floor to a fully open
specimen often nibbled by slugs. Given that the mushrooms have an
hallucinogenic effect on humans, I wonder whether it has the same
effect on slugs? I took a look at at few but it is difficult to tell
a spaced-out slug from an ordinary one! There were lots of other
fungi including a lot of edible boletus mushrooms and there was
evidence of discarded stalks from fungi hunters. These can command
quite a high price and we have seen many for sale in greengrocers.
On the stretch on the
walk from Having we caught a glimpse of the quarry through the trees.
It was quite large but in a very confined valley and with very high,
steep faces. It had the advantage of the quarry where I worked, Torr
Works in Somerset, in that it is well hidden, making it much more
acceptable to the local community. Having walked over another small
rise, we descended to the river Steinach at Neumuhle (New Mill), well
named due to the mill of the same name (it was new once). This, like
many of the mills in the area, has become a guest house and
restaurant. It was interesting to see that the mill had been
converted to small-scale electricity generation, something that I
have always been surprised is not done more often with watermills
that are not appropriate for restoration.
We found that we had
joined a geology trail that had boards that appeared to tell the
story of the earth's rock formation with some reference to the
geology of the area. It appeared that we were walking in an ancient
volcano and we soon came to a large volcanic rock outcrop, known as
Steinachklamm, that diverted the river and towered high above it.
We had expected to
follow the river on its gentle descent to Stadtsteinach but, as we
left Steinachklamm we immediately climbed high above the river and
continued for some time before we descended to river level again. A
little later we came across another mill 'Waffenhammer' a hammer mill
apparently used to produce weapons. There was a small drift mine
entrance just by the mill and we passed another a little later in the
walk that had a sign explaining that it was a former copper mine.
Ascending again we
reached Burgruine Nordeck, ruins of a 16th century castle
that defended the valley. If our translation is correct, there was a
castle on the site from the year 1000 but this was destroyed in 1528
during some sort of peasants revolt.
After descending to the
river again, we approached Stadtsteinach and came across our third
mill. Schneidmuhle is a sawmill built in 1865 and restored in 1982
and it was good to see that the waterwheel was not only in position
but was running.
We had only had a brief
and very light shower earlier in the walk but it now started to rain
and it looked as though it wasn't going to be a short shower. We
increased our pace on the final leg to the campsite passing a large
modern sawmill with that powerful and lovely smell of freshly sawn
pine.
A little soggy after a
most enjoyable walk of about 10 miles, we decided that today was the
time to try some Bavarian cooking and the campsite restaurant was the
best place as it didn't involve a long walk in the rain! We ordered
two beers and discovered that we were drinking beer brewed in
Stadtsteinach and very good it was too. We were handed that night's
menu which consisted of a choice of four main courses and we set
about attempting to translate them using a German-English dictionary.
The only word that we could find was 'knuckle'. The waitress didn't
speak any English but one of the other customers suggested that the
last two dishes (including the 'knuckle') were “beef”. She also
showed us her plate, at a distance, but that didn't help much as it
just appeared to be a sea of white. She also told us that it was
“quite hot” and we assumed that this wasn't the beef. So I had
the 'knuckle' and Jane had the other one. Our Bavarian guidebook
tells us that the traditional Bavarian food is heavy and is usually
meat (lots of) and one veg. It also says that “meat” invariably
means pork as the average German gets through 56 kg (123 lbs) of it
every year! The book was quite correct. Jane's dish was indeed the
same as the other lady's – two large slices of gammon and two large
white semolina dumplings all set in a huge amount of white sauce so
that the thick gammon was completely submerged. Mine was exactly the
same except that the gammon slices were replaced by a huge gammon
hock. I must say that the gammon was very nice and the sauce tasted
good, if a little spicy and then I breathed out through by nose,
which was suddenly on fire. I don't know how much mustard they put it
the sauce but it would have kept us going for a year of roast beef
Sunday dinners. Jane acquired a rosy complexion and beads of sweat
were breaking out on my brow but I was not going to be defeated. The
meal did require another large glass of beer on my part but I got
there and enjoyed it in a masochistic kind of way. Oh, I nearly
forgot to mention the little surprise – in the middle of the
dumplings were some pieces of pork fat, like soggy pork crackling. We
decided that, if we ate like that on a regular basis, our like
expectancy would be dramatically reduced!
Photos: The ancient
monument at Hainberg, which demonstrates a connection with Ireland as
they obviously have 'Little People' here as well!; A selection of
fungi from the walk – Fly Agaric top left, bracket fungus bottom
left, and two types of boletus mushrooms on the right; A wonderful
jester sculpture outside the Waffenhammer mill; Burgruine Nordeck.
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