May The 4th Be With You
It is, of course, Star Wars day… May the 4th be with you.
We emerged at 9.30am and ate breakfast outside, under the canopy, enjoying the view of a very still lake with mirror-like reflections. I’m happy to report the UHT milk was okay (It’s never going to convert me, but I’m confident it’s not going to be too much of an endurance).
The fridge door was giving us problems; by that, I mean it wouldn’t stay shut. When the door is left ajar it emits a warning beep; quite useful when you forget to shut it, but a bit annoying when you can’t shut it up at all, which was the case today. No matter what we did to it, we couldn’t get the blooming thing to stay closed. Various solutions were tried to no avail. In the end, I’m pleased to say Tracey fixed it. It turns out there is a slidey knob built into the catch, which we didn’t even know existed, that when slid forwards prevents the door from fully closing, to prevent mildew. Somehow it had worked its way into the forwards position preventing full closure. The things you learn.
Today’s adventure was a walk up the hill, to a high viewpoint, down to Titisee and then back to the site alongside the edge of the lake, a round trip of roughly four and a half miles.
The first part was all ‘up’; a footpath, easy to follow, but massively overgrown in places, that meandered it’s way up through the trees, under a railway line and across a road, finally emerging into the open, at the top of the hill, alongside a car park. From here, the views were suitably extensive if not quite as dramatic as we’d anticipated, but we enjoyed a rest in a handy seat, being fascinated by clouds of tree pollen rising from the forest like smoke or steam…. Something, I must confess, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen before.
Noticing how hungry we’d become, we sat on some convenient logs to eat our lunch before the final descent into the village.
The lakeside village of Titisee is a pleasant enough place, bursting with restaurants, bars and tourist shops, and not a lot else. This is clearly on the itinerary of almost every coach passing through the Black Forest, luring them in with giant wall-mounted clocks to take photographs in front of, to shops selling endless cuckoo clocks and Black Forest Gateau. There are also regular boat trips around the lake.
What we were looking for, above anything else, was a supermarket, to stock up on food. All we found was a post office that sold a very small selection of fruit and veg and a few tinned goods, and a top-end butchers (of sorts) that sold expensive meats and stuff in jars. We contemplated buying some wild boar sausages but they were just that little bit too expensive for our taste, so we settled for a pack of four German sausages and some baguettes with which to make hot dogs, accompanied by a selection of different fruits.
Our return walk back to the site, alongside the edge of the lake, was easy and very pleasant. There were the odd few spots of light rain, which had us reaching for the waterproofs from out of the rucksack, but nothing too heavy or prolonged.
This is a big campsite, capable of taking 200 motorhomes/caravans. I quite enjoy looking at other vans and their camping setups; some are so large (we’re talking bus-sized) as to make you wonder who would buy one. Watching them pole up on site, and struggle to manoeuvre into spaces is an entertainment in itself – goodness knows how they’d fair navigating the narrow lanes of Cornwall or the Lake District.
Turned a bit cooler later, requiring us to put on another Leia.
