Hillwalking at Glen Lyon

Tramping has many different names in different parts of the world - in Britain it's called hillwalking (rambling in England, perhaps where there aren't any real hills involved?), in Australia it's bushwalking, in North America hiking.

Anyway, I organised a hillwalk with a bunch of my workmates (and a few of Sylvia's) at a place called Glen Lyon. It's a seldom visited part of Scotland, but it's hardly remote, lying in the southern highlands - I think it's the long, windy road that puts people off more than the remoteness. It was certainly worth the journey though!

I won't harp on about it but here's a few pictures. Photo credits for some go to Eric.

The famous five go hillwalking! It was quite a steep descent back to the car.

Sylvia's workmate Shehu shows us how it's done in style.

Rannoch Moor and Glencoe (scene of a previous blog post) in the background.

Loch Lyon

Sylvia demonstrate how to bum slide when there's no snow. The only spaniards they have in Scotland are the two-legged variety.

Mainz

Our last stop (as you'll know if you are still refering to the map several posts back) was Mainz, for no reason other than to visit my favourite ex-flatmate in the whoooole of Germany, Andreas. Unfortunately due to all our previous adventures we only had two days to catch up on a couple of years' worth of gossip, but Andy kindly took the days off work so we had plenty of time to reminise.

One of the highlights was visiting the Rhine Valley for the day, where we saw some truly cool medieval ruins and not-so-ruins (like the house below from 1323, which is still in good form, as long as you're not into straight lines). We also walked up a NZ-style path (with rocks! And narrow!) to a castle called the Schönberg, which was indeed very beautiful.

Following this, Andreas took us bouldering at his local wall, which had loads of great easy and easy-ish routes. We found a favourite climb and played 'who can climb this the fastest' - Mark won with 4.45 seconds.

To top it all over, Andy cooked one of my favourite German dishes - Spätzle - which I fondly remember from our flatting days at 7 Lyall Place, Bryndwr. Here's him showing how much energy goes into good German cooking:

Freiburg

Guten Tag, I hope you enjoyed the train ride from Konstanz (2 changes) to arrive in the pleasant university town of Freiburg.

Freiburg is very close to the French border and lies at the southern end of the Schwarzwald (Black Forest). If you look back a couple of posts, you'll see a map showing exactly where it is. This is what Freiburg looks like.

We stayed with Julian and Jana in their swish apartment with its comfy IKEA fold-out couch. Julian finds it a bit small by NZ standards (well, NZ not living in an apartment standards) but it is actually pretty cool, quite a bit of space for a one bedroom place and it has a BALCONY! Ah, if only...

One of the many outdoor activities you can enjoy on Freiburg's doorstep is mountain biking in the Schwarzwald. Here is Sylvia on Jana's new bike - before Jana even got to use it! Fortunately she didn't write it off.

We went out for dinner one night at the Kartoffelhaus (potato house), where pretty much all the items on the menu are based on the humble spud.

Sylvia also made a very yummy Schwarzwalden Kirchtorte (Black Forest Gateaux)!

We came across Stefan's Stuntman Supershow on the streets of Freiburg. We watched, unsure what was going on, as Stefan rode a bike through a (polystyrene) brick wall and other such feats of superhuman strength and bravery. Jana got to throw marshmallow chocolate eggs at him too, though had to pay a euro for the privledge. It turned out that it was Stefan's stag do (not a protest against something, though apparently it's often hard to tell the difference).

While we really enjoyed staying with Julian and Jana, we had planned to do a trip away somewhere for at least a night from Freiburg. Unfortunately the weather didn't really suit those plans so we limited ourselves to day trips. We visited Triberg (below) which claims to have the tallest waterfall in Germany. I guess it depends on your definition, but it seems to me to be cheating when it's in fact a long cascade! It was very nice though, and the train journey on the Black Forest Railway was worthwhile in itself.

Lake Constance

The next stage in our German adventures was Lake Constance, properly called Bodensee. To continue with the thoroughly organised trip reporting, here's a map of where we went around the lake:We decided to splash out and stay in hotels, which was great when it rained all throughout our first evening/morning in Friedrichshafen. Also, our shy 'Sprechen Sie Englisch?' was met with a firm 'nein' so we spent quite a while translating the hotel instructions on what we were and weren't allowed to do and most importantly, what time breakfast was. The breakfast buffet was great - cheese, meat, bread, nutella..

The following day we caught the ferry to Konstanz (see photo left), at the head of the Rhine and the border with Switzerland. Our next hotel had a fantastic with a view over the lake and even a wee kitchen (where we cooked white asparagus - no-one told us you were supposed to peel it first). The downside was the free food this time was another German speciality - McBreakfast! Yes, vouchers for the McDonalds. We were tempted not to use them but being the stingy kiwis we are we just couldn't resist the free-ness of it. Mmm lardy.

All the McFat made us decide we needed some exercise - so we decided to bike around an arm of Lake Constance. Actually, there's a great track that goes around the whole lake. It's mostly off-road on dedicated cycle paths or on quiet roads through amazingly picturesque towns. Also very well signposted, although we still managed to get lost at one point (see the squiqqly bit on the map above). It was a decent 75km ride on our hired bikes (8 Euro each for the day, what a score!) and certain parts were pretty sore by the end. Very sore, actually.

We also thought it was pretty cool that we spent half the day cycling in Switzerland, and half in Germany (there was no border control). The two photos here are us making a border crossing in Konstanz....

The next day was a bit more relaxing with a ferry across to Meersburg in the sunshine, a wander around the town there and a beer by the lakeside. We then decided to rough things up a bit by hiring a boat. I think we'd envisaged some speedy double kayak, but we got a peddle boat which took almost 20 minute at top Mark&Sylvia peddle speed to reach the Swiss border about 200m away. We tried chasing a swan but it lazily outswam us. The most fun was avoiding the ferries.

After two full days in the glaring sunshine we were actually starting to feel it, so Mark turned into the peddle boat Ninja by putting his polypro on his head. The swans weren't impressed.