“By morning these hills will be swarming with orcs” (Aragorn son of Arathron, Lord of the Rings). And so it was that we planned to hit the high roads and the forest once more to avoid the throngs of long weekend tourists. One morning they were so thick that, when I stepped aside to let an elderly couple pass by, they turned and leaped directly for the table we were clearly about to occupy, I tried jamming my boot into the spokes of their wheel chairs, but it was too late, with smug looks they locked in their brakes and called for the waiter. Bloody tourists.
But not us, no, no, we are locals, locals for three days ensconsed as we are in our apartment through an old timber door. We come to and fro, possibly more times than needed, for the sheer fun of slipping out of the crowd, into our little door way. This morning we ducked around the corner to “our” salon de tea where, due to the sad lack of gluten free options, I was forced to consume a chocolate coated, meringue biscuit, chocolate mousse filled round thingy with my coffee. For the record, however delightful at the time, half a kilo of chocolate is not the best walking food. Di’s pain o’ raisin was the better choice.
The morning light lit up the side of the old stone clock tower and spread out over the vines as we wandered up the hill out of the village. Hunawihr, the small village between us and Ribeauville, our destination, is far less touristy but perhaps more beautiful. Less of the brightly coloured, painted render seen all through the popular villages and more of the natural stone and wood. There’s a fortified church here, built on the foundations of an 800 AD roman villa and chapel.
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| Hunawihr with it’s 800 AD church foundations |
As we approached Ribeauville, the three chateaux of Chateau du Haut Ribeaupierre, Chateau de St Ulrich and Chateau du Girsbergasd, became visible high in the hills above. We’d thought we were done with long walks for awhile, but these castles looked sensational. Wandering down into the old town, over a mossy stone bridge so overhung by spring foliage that you knew the presence of water only by the loud rushing below, we found the path to the chateaux.
Our path was blocked by a temporary red barricade that we assumed, naturally, was to prevent cars. Further up the mountain, the rapidly deteriorating path, large wash-aways and steeply sloping shale, suggested we may have been incorrect in our earlier assumptions. It was the tape across the path and the trees spray-painted with “closed since 2016” that clinched it. Unpeturbed, and fuelled perhaps by the remaining 250g of mousse, we pressed on.
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| The Chateaux rise in the distance |
I was building to something there but truth is the only disaster we struck was to emerge from the forest to a clearing where a German hiker, standing stage left, was ineffectually trying to distract our attention from stage right, where his wife was squatting for a pee. We quickly whipped out our maps, fixed our attention on our next turn and chatted quietly until said frauline had sorted herself out.
The view from the first chateau was breathtaking (642m), south to Labaroche and the Grand Honnack where we had walked some days earlier and further beyond Alsace to France Comte and then East to the Swiss alps. We shared a picnic table in the woods with Frederick from the French Army. His wife was working the long weekend and had dropped him off to hike and camp in the forests of the Vosges. We exchanged chocolate for freshly boiled tea and he told us of stinging nettle, (that you keep for two days then add to salad), of his three much loved belgian shepherds that he didn’t bring because of bush ticks, of his daughter travelling the world and currently working in Saint Tropez and of his army travels, to the Ivory Coast, Seira Leone, Chad and Lebanon.
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| Atop the chateaux |
The other two chateaux (see photos) were equally impressive and one wonders at the effort required to build them, and how fleetingly the buildings of today stand the test of time in comparison. Bring back serfdom and slavery I say.
The walk home was superb in the long evening light. We stopped amongst the vines above the old fortified church at hunawihr, to finish our Pinot Gris and watch the sun go down….amazing the contrast between the 800 ad church, French fast train flying through the valley in the distance and paddocks of windfarms on the German horizon.