Monday 4th May, Day 5 - Black Forest Walk

Looking down on Titisee Lake on the first part of our walk

We woke to the sun shining, so it was breakfast outside with the view of the mirror flat lake. The plan today was to go for a walk. Unfortunately, OS Maps only works for the UK, so we had to search for other options and found Komoot.  Peter did a mashup with our trusted Maps.me and came up with a route about 4 miles long.  

The first part was really steep, up through the woods climbing about 570 ft until we reached Rotkreuz, a sort of junction where bus, cycle, road, and walking routes all sort of meet up.

The trees opened out into a large meadow where we could see over the hills over the southern Black Forest.  Blue skies, green meadows and deep green forest in all directions.  Absolutely gorgeous.

And from here, we could see the clouds of pollen almost exploding from the trees - drifting in the wind to settle onto other parts of the forest hundreds of meters away. We sat and watched as clouds kept emerging from the forest, like steam rising on a hot day.

Our walk then went back into the woods and downhill towards Titisee town.  Despite being mostly pine, and a managed forest, the trees were usually quite well spaced which meant the floor of the forest was covered in a variety of plants, shrubs and flowers, I noticed wood-sorrel, wood anemone, cowslips, and violets amongst them.

Out of the woods we walked past the quaint, traditional houses and buildings of Titisee.  We decided that whilst we were here, we'd try and found a supermarket.  Unfortunately this part of town was purely for tourists, and we struggled to find anywhere selling food.  Eventually, (thanks to Google), we found a grocers where we bought fresh fruit, and on the  way back to the lake, a speciality butchers, so we bought sausages and fresh bread rolls.  That's tea sorted then. 

The last stretch of the walk took us around the lake.  The pollen was obvious here too, as the edge of the lake was covered in it, bright yellow washing up onto the shore. 

Back at the van and relaxed, we've started to think about our next stop, Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria.  This is what I planned we should see from the start, and I'm hoping it's as good as I remember.