Tuesday 5th May - First night in Garmisch-Partenkirchen

I had initially thought we might visit King Ludwig's Castle whilst on our way from the Black Forest to Garmisch-P.  Working out timings, tickets etc, we decided against it because of the 4 1/2 hour drive.  Instead, we made it a leisurely morning, leaving the site about 11.

Lake Titisee - mirror flat before the boat rides start.  Excellent view from this site. (Expensive tho')

Really pleased to see this Black Redstart perch in front of our van this morning. 

We planned to visit a supermarket on the way and found a Lidl right next to our route.  It had fresh milk (rather than the UHT stuff we'd found at the last place), which made Peter reeeeeally happy.   We also needed a place to stop and have lunch, and since we were driving alongside the Bodensee, where better?   The north shore of the Obersee Bodensee is in Germany, the south shore is in Switzerland.  

The shores of the Bodensee - this side Germany, Switzerland across the lake. 

As we approached our destination, the landscape changed. The Alps started to rise around us, and we began to be excited by the possibilities. 

I wasn't sure about our site when I'd looked down on it using Google maps.  I'd picked a "comfort" pitch to make sure we had plenty of room.  The pitch is massive and we are very pleased.  Not much grass about, but like the last site the showers are awesome, as are the pitch facilities.  And the view!

Drago on pitch at the Camping Resort Zugspitz

Very happy.

The view from our van, I think that is the Grosse Riffelwandspitze (which translates to Large Ridgewall Peak) that we can see. The Zugspitze, which is 190m higher, is behind it. 

Added bonus - we get to use the local buses and the train from Garmisch-P to Eibsee for free.  How cool is that?

😢But that night....... As we were planning on how to get to the Cogwheel train and cable cars that are all over the surrounding area I discovered that the ones I most wanted to use were closed for maintenance.  I was really angry at the website for not making that information more obvious. It wasn't on the website front page, or at the point where you bought tickets, and I actually found out by accident when I saw that one of the stations is closed.  I was so disappointed. I'd planned using those cable cars around the Zugspitze, and had become really excited at the thought.  It will take me a while to get over it.

So tomorrow we are going to have a look at the Partnachklamm (Partnach Gorge). We've worked out how to get there by bus and the weather forecast is OK, just a few showers expected.  The start of our mountain tour begins.

Monday 4th May, 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.

Sunday May 3 - Titisee in the Black Forest, Germany

Peter posing - our pitch at Titisee

We had to have a little conflab this morning to decide where we were aiming for next.  We were to visit the Black Forest, with Freiburg im Breisgau football stadium (100 aire places) as a central point.  But I knew that there were loads of aires and places to stay a little further east, right in the forest itself, and they would make a better central point for the visit.  I remembered Titisee from my earlier research,  Peter found plenty of aires and campsites, and that was our decision made. 

So we said goodbye to Strasbourg (lovely place, would be very happy to come back), and headed south east, crossing the Rhine which makes the border between France and Germany,  towards Titisee-Neustadt.  The first site we looked at was closed, the 2nd didn't make us want to stay, and then we found this one, Sandbank.  It's on the edge of the lake Titisee, and Peter liked the way the pitches were set into terraces up the hill. After the shock of finding out the 51 euro per night charge, we decided to stay a couple of nights anyway.

The last two places we stayed at were jam packed full.  We think that might have been because of the Labour Day BH and the fact it was a weekend.  This site is only about half full, which is nice.  When we arrived, it was really warm and sunny, and one thing that almost became a problem was pollen.  We noticed that everything quickly became covered in a yellow dust. I can only think that it's coming from the surrounding forest, there aren't any trees close by.  A shower of rain later seemed to ease it. 

View over the lake

We've had a lovely relaxed afternoon, sorting out domestic stuff (like cruises), checking out the facilities (the loos and showers are AMAZING), a nap, reading the news, I cooked dinner etc, etc, and it's been lovely.

For info - Lake Titisee is 840m (or 2756 ft) above sea level, which is higher than quite a few of the fells in the Lake District.  Tomorrow we plan to go out for a wander as there are so many walking trails here.  I'm really quite looking forward to it. 

Night time view - camera doesn't do it justice