May Break: Sunday

Sunday (May 7) was equally beautiful and warm, but ended with thunder, lightning and rain. By that time, we were long back at the hotel and only had to cross the road after dinner to get to our flat in another building.

For the day, we chose the second-longest of the suggested walks, the "Benistobel-Tour". Before you start on the jokes, it has nothing to do with the male genital. Tobel means a narrow valley, and the area has plenty of those. On a quick internet search, I could not find information about the origin of the name Benis; as is often the case, it might just be the name of a family or person who owned that particularly piece of land at some stage, or lived and worked there.

Today, Benistobel consists of a handful of houses, a working farm offering holiday accomodation and walking tours with alpacas.

But although the tour is named after the rather unassuming place, it is the path itself that you want: Gently meandering between fields and meadows (in bloom, as you know), woodland and hamlets, it offers a few steep-ish hills, the odd muddy bit in the woods, but much of it is walking on narrow field lanes that are well kept. The tour is very well signposted and is only around 9 km long.

Along the way, we met cows, horses and alpacas, but very few people. High above, red kites were having a great time circling and letting out their long, unmistakable whistling call. 

Mother and child

Friendly and interested

Brunette and Blonde

Typical farmhouse and barn for this area

You can rent these guys for a walk.

Beautiful Benistobel

Old barn in Benistobel

Lookout with an unusual annex

Coming back towards Limpach

St. Georg in Limpach, vicarage (next to church) and former baking house (small building)

Inside the church

Things were being prepard for the Georgsritt (St. George's Ride), a traditional event in the area.

(Almost) all of the church - I couldn't get a better picture.

I enjoyed every step of the walk - and the coffee and cake on the sunlit hotel terrace afterwards.

Later, we had the spa area largely to ourselves (most of the other hotel guests were participating in a seminar) and then another very good meal before going back to our flat.

The church was built some time around 1275 (it was mentioned in chronicles then, so it must have existed a little before that), and the community claimed to possess two relics of St. George. 

We were too early for the annual St. George's Ride (it is always on the 2nd Sunday in May), but you can see pictures of it here, if you like. It certainly looks like a beautiful event, and from the description on the website, it is very important to the community of Limpach.