|||
Up at 07:09. Skipped having a shower but brushed my teeth and rinsed yesterday’s socks. I’m now at breakfast. It’s decent — typical continental selection — Müsli, yoghurt, bread, cheese, salami, some fruit.
I’m sitting at a table by a window with a view of cows in an Alpine meadow.
08:31: Ready to move.
08:46:36: The youth hostel. I recorded nothing about its scale or architecture in my notes.
09:07: Entering Titisee. I’m having a slow start. The sun is shining on the lake so it’s not photographable.
I’m in the ‘town’ of Titisee now. It consists of vast Alpine lodges, hotels, spas and the like. I’m looking for a supermarket where I can buy a few bits for lunch.
Changing the batt in the GPS now. I’m definitely off to a slow start today. Also need to apply sun screen. Titisee feels like a bit of a disappointment. Ireland does mountain lakes rather well — perhaps better.
10:30: I’m walking into the wind and sun. I’ve got earplugs in, listening to podcasts. This is a noisy, busy road through an Alpine meadow landscape. Neustadt is a couple of kilometres away, where there’s an Aldi.
10:54: At Aldi. Onion soup, sultanas, two readymade sandwiches, Apfelschorle, crisps, 25c deposit: €6.11.
11:16: Drank the Apfelschorle and got the deposit back. Moving again.
11:41: Turning off the road finally and onto a ridge. Earplugs out. I’m just going through the motions today. I’d rather be sitting on a terrace reading and eating cake.
Notebook 6 begins here. This notebook runs from 26 May: Titisee-Neustadt to 22 June: Munich.
11:47: I’m stopping to eat my salami sandwiches. I’m on the side of an Alpine valley meadow. fringed on all sides by forest, at the tops of the low slopes.
11:49:35: My path took me through one of those themed woodland walks. This one had inspiring quotes about nature, landscape, travel and the self. This quote from Marcel Proust reads: “A true journey of discovery doesn’t consist of exploring new landscapes, but rather, of seeing with new eyes.”
12:37:09
13:04: That was satisfactory and quick, but it does result in a lot of trash.1
13:33:10
13:47: I’m at 1007m.
14:52:07
16:14: I’m about a kilometre away from the camping. I think the Apfelschorle caused me a slightly upset stomach. I nipped behind a tree during the afternoon and I’ve been feeling better since.
16:21:30
16:31: At the camping office. Seems like a really nice chilled setup.
16:51: The office isn’t open, so I’m chilling out on the restaurant terrace with a cuppa.
This place is infinitely more relaxed than Titisee. (and actually I’d got the name wrong, it’s not Kimbergsee, it’s Kirnbergsee.) The lake is about a kilometre along its longest axis and is surrounded by meadows back by pine forests. It’s really idyllic. Titisee by comparison is tediously overdeveloped.
18:04: I’m having a mixed salad. It looks like the options for getting food in the middle of nowhere are vastly better in Germany. I don’t think I’m going to have to carry days’ worth of supplies through Germany. The prices in the restaurant are good enough to offset the hassle and second-rateness of anything I could cook for myself. I’m going to prepare a soup/couscous mix tonight solely to use up the couscous so I don’t have to carry it a bloody kilometre further than I need to.
19:11: I checked in at the campsite at 18:45 and then had another cuppa. Three cups of tea and a mixed salad (Bunte salat): €9.60.
20:08:26
20:08:42
20:10: Basha set up on a bit of level ground among the other tents at the lake edge, oriented end-on to the wind.
Way back, during the shakeout walk, I devised a very successful system of putting trash in a half-mesh drawstring bag lark’s-headed onto my backpack. Having it out there meant it was away from food and other items and easily accessible, so that as soon as I passed a bin, I’d swing the bag off and dump the trash.↩
