As Calw was the furthest away we headed there first shopping in a quaint village on the way for morning refreshments. Calw was a very picturesque town with a large town square (I had read that it is the largest in Germany but I can’t find anything to corroborate that).
Like most towns that we have seen on our various trips the main shopping area is pedestrian only and so one can amble up the road window shopping to one’s heart’s content.
The buildings surrounding the square are quite stunning at least in comparison to those we have at home.
BW isn’t the most exciting town we have visited but there was a funicular which takes one high above the town and gives a great view of the forest and how villages have been settled in the valleys
(Why is it called the Black Forest when everywhere you look it’s green? Perhaps an early settler was colour blind, just a thought!)
In NZ if a road is closed there will be a detour sign and you follow those signs to get around the obstruction, not so here!
A few kms out of BW I pointed out to my co-driver that the road sign we had just passed had a Red Cross over BB and thought nothing too much of it so pressed on. About 10kms further on there was a barrier across the lane in the direction that we were travelling but as the other “lane” was open it was quite easy to drive around the barrier and continue on.
When we got to another similar barrier we stopped in front of it and got out Google Translate and worked out that it was saying there was no access to the highway that our GPS was directing us to, so we turned around and started heading back, but realised we had no clue where we were going to. We stopped and accessed Google Maps on a phone and worked out another route to BB which didn’t use the obstructed highway, so with Sherry navigating from the phone we set off, but 15ish kms later we came to a dead end as this highway was closed as they were clearing some trees from the forest.
Having seen some younger workmen back down the road we went back in the hope firstly that someone spoke some English and secondly they could point us in the right direction. Luckily we were grateful that they could do both and we were told to take the road adjacent to where they were working and follow it to Besenfeld and “your nav will take you from there”
Long story short, the road was no better than a one lane cattle track and it was not mapped on the GPS nor did we get to Besenfeld, though we did get on a main highway so we decided to set the GPS for BW, get back there and go back to BB in the reverse direction that we had come this morning.
About 3kms out from BW there was a sign at a corner indicating the way to BB so we decided to follow that however another 10ish kms up the road we came to a screaming halt as came to the same signpost with BB crossed out - we had gone around in a very long circle!!
With tail firmly between the legs we turned back around and went back to BW, found the signpost that is in the blog above and then now knowing we were on a road that was open (or was this morning) headed back to BB arriving here at 6.37pm some 2.5 later than we had expected having covered an extra 105kms!!
I called the day “frustrating” whereas Sherry described it as a “f..king disaster”
Kms now driven 406
Kms now walked 40.2
2 comments:
Watch your language Dave. Can’t show the grandkids!!!!!
That sounds extremely frustrating 🤬🤬
Post a Comment