Tales from the Summer Break (1)

Now that I've posted the date-y things, it's time for some rambling about the summer break. First of all, and most importantly: It was wonderful. It was also full of things, both holiday-ish things and some work-related stuff that I finally got around to doing, and some household things, and a bit of cooking things, and some green living stuff. All of this is, in some ways, mashing nicely together. Which also means that I want to write about all of this, which will probably result in a long and rambling post that will be split at semi-random places to make a series of blog posts, because it's definitely way, way too much to go into a single one.

So. Let me set the scene...

First of all was our vacation, with a trip. Like about almost everyone, we spent our holidays this year in Germany (though we quite often do that, actually, since we both appreciate not having to travel for ages before or after). We had originally thought about going on a cycling tour in Denmark, but several different things, such as not being keen on spending 8+ hours on the train wearing masks, and some issues with the bike that are a bit more complicated and need to be fixed before a trip with heavy luggage, along with the usual C-19 issues of going abroad, made us change our plan. At least the bike issues meant that the decision what to do was easier: canoeing or hiking. We definitely wanted to use campsites as much as possible, which ruled out quite a few possibilities. That was especially the case with the hiking areas and hiking routes; a lot of them only have very few campsites along the route, and you need to spend nights in pensions, hotels or B&Bs. This would not be a real deterrent for us in a normal year, but this summer, we had indications that it might be rather full in German accommodations.

In the end, after researching quite a bit, we had almost given up on the hiking plan - and then I clicked one last link, and stumbled across something called the "Forststeig", and there we had it. The perfect hiking route for us: located in Saxonia, in the Elbsandstein area. This place is known for its spectacular sandstone formations - we had seen them when paddling on the Elbe last year, but it's very different again to explore them on foot.



The route is leading you through the forest with almost no contact with civilisation, with small campsites just for the Forststeig hikers. We were a bit unsure at first, as you have to carry all your food and take care about your drinking water underway, but we did decide to do it. Definitely a very, very good decision - it was glorious!

[caption id="attachment_5556" align="alignnone" width="225"] Stone steps in the middle of nowhere - a rather frequent occurrence.


The Forststeig leads you from Schöna to Bad Schandau, almost exclusively on small paths and trails. The route goes through Germany and the Czech republic, and on some parts, you walk right on the border between these two states. Because it's meandering to make sure you climb every hill (the steeper the better) and see every spectacular sight, the route manages to squeeze more than a hundred kilometres of trail into the area.

[caption id="attachment_5557" align="alignnone" width="225"] You can be sure that if there's a "comfy ascent" and a "steep ascent", the Forststeig will send you up the former.


It's very well marked (yellow lines on the trees), and there are campsites and a few huts for spending the night along the way. There's also one partner campsite near Bad Schandau, and one regular camping site in Ostrov. There's a scant handful of restaurants in the first half of the route, but there are no shops along the way. In fact, you're always as far away from civilisation as is possible. You're sometimes very close to the stones, though:

[caption id="attachment_5558" align="alignnone" width="300"] In some spaces, the stones are close enough together that my backpack touched both sides of the gap...


We walked about 12 to 18 km each day, with the packs slowly getting lighter. That was exhausting, but in a very good way - and it felt so good to be breathing fresh forest air all day long, and to have (mostly) silence, and then casual good company in the evenings when we'd see other hikers again at the bivouac sites. And because we all were outdoors all the time, there was no wearing a mask for days. You could almost forget there's a pandemic going on...