October Walls

You may have noticed that all my recent posts have a title that begins with October. I am slowly running out of ideas and thought of naming this one "October Castle", but somehow that sounded odd, and so I chose "Walls" - you will see why in a minute.

Last weekend was a long weekend in my part of Germany, with Monday, the 1st of November, being a Bank Holiday (All Saints). After my Girls' Night on the Friday, I arrived at O.K.'s on Saturday early afternoon, right in time for coffee and cake. As it was too close to sunset for a proper long walk, we only took a short walk through the village before settling down for the night. But we more than made up for that the next day!

Sunday was the last day of October, and the last October hike we undertook. It was very warm with temperatures reaching at least 20 Celsius in the sun, which induced most people to walk about short-sleeved and -legged, but as soon as you were in the shade or when the wind blew, you could tell it was autumn and not summer anymore.

We drove a short distance to a place not far from where O.K. works, and started a circuit I had found in one of our many leaflets. It was to take us to the ruins of castle Hohengeroldseck, a place we have visited together first in 2016 and then again in May 2020. You can read some facts about the castle here in my 2016 post.

Since the day was so beautiful and the countryside so gorgeous, I took too many pictures to fit them all in one post; therefore, this one ends with the castle, and then there will be just one other one to finally end my series of October posts.

Starting from the parking lot, we found it amazing how so close to a main road, just 10 minutes or 1 km away, it felt like being far away from the hustle and bustle of traffic and town life. There were a few typical Black Forest farm houses dotted along the path, which then took us steadily upwards and into the woods.

I found the long uphill part rather exhausting and had to stop to catch my breath a few times, but eventually, we reached the top and from there, it was not very far to the castle ruins.

After walking through the gate, visitors are greeted by this impressive sight:

The ruins can be explored left, right and centre, with a stone spiral staircase leading up all the way to the top, and even though I have seen them twice before, I was impressed once again by their size. One can well imagine the former grandeur.

The best, sunniest spots were all taken by other visitors, but we found a bench where we could rest and have our rucksack lunch, with this view of the ruins:

Along one of the walls, a small garden has been planted, showing herbs and spices that would have been known to the residents in medieval times. The pictures also show quite well how the natural rock was incorporated into the foundation walls of the castle.

We left Hohengeroldseck to complete our circuit, but I am certain that this was not our last visit here.