A Hike Repeated

My previous post ended with the promise of an extra post about our Sunday hike of last week, so here it is.

Back in October 2020, O.K. and I first did a circuit called Durbacher Weinpanorama (literally "wine panorama of Durbach", Durbach being a small town nearly entirely dedicated to wine, from making to selling, not far from O.K.'s village. You can find my 2020 post about that day here.

Of course, it being May, this time there were no colourful leaves on the trees and in the vineyards, but it was a beautiful day of sunshine and summer-like temperatures of 21-23 C / 70-73 F, with the many shades of green in the woods and the wildflower meadows at their best.

The entire circuit is about 15 km, but because of a fruitless detour which sounded interesting because it was supposed to be the ruins of an ancient fortress (but turned out to be just a patch of very overgrown hills, with brambles and nettles lining hardly detectable paths), we ended up with a bit over 16 km.

Sign announcing the ruins that made me want to do the detour.

It was a very enjoyable day, in spite of me doing my usual puffing and panting act on the steeper uphill bits, and some of the steep downhill bits being a bit treacherous because the gravelly, sandy ground was extremely dry and slipping away under our hiking boots.

Starting out from the parking lot along wildflower meadows

Compare this wall of the chapel ruins in the woods with the photo of the same spot I took in October 2020 (see the link at the start of this post) - this one looks much nicer, doesn't it.

Our lunch break consisted of the sandwiches O.K. had prepared for us, plus some extras we usually pack when we plan a hike like that, such as fresh bell pepper cut into strips, a few small tomatoes and some fresh strawberries plus an apple. The bench where we sat for our "al fresco" meal provided us with a beautiful view:

We stopped for a drink at castle Staufenberg, a place you have seen once or twice on my blog before, and were lucky to find a table right by the wall with great views.

View from castle Staufenberg

In the courtyard

The outside wall

Looking back towards the castle after our break

The same view zoomed in

Chapel at the crossing leading to the castle

A working farm; typically they will do a mix of vineyard and woodland work; many of the places around here also have Christmas tree plantations and make schnaps and liqueur.

The same view zoomed in. Doesn't it look like something you'd find on a model railway?

The Black Forest should be renamed Green Forest!

Back home, neither of us felt much like cooking, and so we freshened up a bit, changed out of our hiking clothes into regular things and drove the short distance to one of the neighbouring villages, where we had a decent meal at a typical village restaurant.

It had been a wonderful day, and I am glad we repeated that hike.