After two days of cycling we decided to take the car over the border into Germany and have a drive into the hills of the Black Forest.
We drove north and crossed the Rhine at Marckolsheim before heading east into the dense evergreen forest, remeniscent of the fairy tales that evolved here; Little Red Riding Hood; Hansel and Gretal; Rapunzel; I can see that it would have been easy to imagine the characters and storylines to create these tales in this setting.
We passed through valleys, this time bringing forth images of Heidi and The Sound of Music, broad meadows of green and gold and quaint traditional wooden chalets with brightly coloured flowers tumbling from window boxes.
On we went, passing over hills, through woodland, winding down narrow mountain roads and through small towns on the hillsides and in the valleys, until we reached the town of Triberg, nestled deep in the Black Forset and famous for being home to Germany's highest waterfall.
It also has a shop selling nothing but cuckoo clocks, including the world's smallest and the world's most expensive, and if you still have room for another cuckoo clock after all that, you can see the world's largest just on the edge of the town.
We enjoyed a walk up to the waterfall, which was stunning, dropping 163 metres over a series of cascades. On the same walk we took in the Baroque Pilgrimage Church, and Bergsee Lake which supposedly dates back to the ice age, finishing off our trip with a visit to the Black Forest Museum and, of course, a slice of its world famous Black Forest Gateaux - delicious!
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