An easy 8 mile hike in the Alsace visiting the impressive Chateau du Haut Koenigsbourg

Date walked: 17th April 2018

Distance: around  8 miles

Map used: IGN No 122 Colmar, Mulhouse/Bale covers the area but at a scale of 1cm to 1 km but it is really not good enough for following the footpaths. I subscribe to an App called IGN Outdoors and this allowed me to download and plot each days walk onto my phone at a large-scale (4cm to 1 km).

Arranged through: Sherpa Expeditions, who chose the route, selected and booked our accommodation, arranged luggage transfers and provided detailed walking notes and large-scale map extracts for each walk.

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Here’s the first map for the day:

Bob and I had stayed last night at the excellent Auberge de La Meuniere in Thannenkirch;

I had loved everything about this place and wished we were staying there a week. This is one of the hard things about walking on from one place to the next with everything booked in advance- there’s no room for spontaneity. (It also is a drag to unpack and pack every day).  Breakfast had been served in the huge, light, dining room and had been good. The fruit salad could have been fresher but I loved the glazed pastries and the fact that they actually brought the coffee in a pot.

If you squint at the map you can see that we had a steady climb to make from the outskirts of the village to the castle at Haut-Koenigsbourg. It was another warm and sunny morning and our route followed the road through the village, giving us a nice view through blossom laden trees of  Thannenkirch’s church and the hills that we had walked through yesterday.

In a garden we passed a ceramic deer was grazing below a rather beautiful magnolia.

Do you think it acts as a decoy, like a plastic heron?

The Easter decoration theme extended here to a collection of bits and bobs to please the post person and passing traffic.

Or perhaps it was rubbish collection day?

We left the road at the end of the village and headed up a footpath into a wood which turned out to be the GR5 (GRs are National Trails) so for a while we could be fairly confident of regular way-marking. The wood had what our notes called a Sentier Botanique. This was manifest by countless (well, I am sure you could count them but why bother) little posts in the vicinity of a tree or shrub, telling you its name…

This was interesting because it satisfied my vanity in that I could identify most of the shrubs and trees (though not in French). But the weakness of the markers was that if you did not know what you were looking at there was often ambiguity about which tree or shrub the post referred to.

There were also some bigger, posts that were less discreet.

Not pretty, but informative

Anyway, it was pleasant climb and we were glad of  the dappled shade.

Undergrowth wise there was not much to report; though some periwinkle was pretty.

Vinca; though which vinca I know not.

The path was more or less running parallel to the D42, which climbed in a series of hair-pin bends; we met it a couple of times….

I like French road signs, don’t you? You could buy a licence to use this from Getty!

… but mostly ours was a more direct route,  keeping the road within earshot.

It was quite a quiet road so our ears weren’t too shot

As we approached the castle the path flattened out somewhat as we passed through a recently felled area;

Action pic of Bob, note one leg off the ground.

we speculated that a local carpenter had taken their pick.

On the ground I spotted some  perky Wood Anemone.

Always a delight

The final approach to Haut Koenigsbourg was very gentle….

… and then we found ourselves beneath the castle’s imposing red sandstone walls.

On reading my uncle Nigel’s book “Walking in Wine Country“, he had intended to come here on an Autumn day in 1992 but had been defeated by awful weather.  Whether he ever made it here I do not know but I would have loved to have known how it might have changed in 25 or so years. For Bob and I and coachloads of trippers (mostly school parties) going round was a must. Bob found a queue for tickets and shuffled along it inside the building for about half an hour while I sat and sunned myself in the little courtyard,…..

…..reading the wikipedia entry on my phone. It say:

“The Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg is a medieval castle situated in a strategic location on a rocky spur overlooking the Upper Rhine Plain; as a result it was used by successive powers from the Middle Ages until the Thirty Years’ War when it was abandoned. From 1900 to 1908 it was rebuilt at the behest of the German emperor Wilhelm II. After World War I, the French state confiscated the castle in accordance with the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.Today it is a major tourist site, attracting more than 500,000 visitors a year.”

One never usually knows how much restoration castles have been through but in this case there were lots of boards which showed that in this case it has been considerable. This took nothing away from the interest in our circulation through its internal courtyard….

… and upper rooms…

… many of which served as repositories of  medieval weaponry and other artefacts of the period.

The views both looking out…

… and of the castle itself were fab.

Carefully consulting our next map ….

….. and after a little sit outside the walls (we couldn’t face the almost certain queues in the cafe) we found our path leading away from the castle zig-zagged  through the wooded hillside.

The sun shining through the fresh green leaves was beautiful and once we were away from the road we were back into peace and quiet.

One thing that struck me was how varied the woodland was. Patches of young deciduous trees, would give way to to a coniferous plantation…

… with carpets of bilberry…

….and then back to deciduous.

Approaching Kintzheim, our notes suggested we might visit the Spectable de la Volerie des Aigles…

NO

… but neither of us are very drawn to captive bird displays so we pressed on, missing out also as I realised afterwards on seeing the Chateau de Kintzheim.

Kintzheim announced itself to us with a less grand building.

A few hundred yards from here we left the forest and were returned to the familiar vineyards, our path heading north.

From our dirt road we had a good vantage point to appreciate the brightly tiled roof of the Eglise Saint Georges as we approached Chatenois.

In fact our route would pass its door so we could get an even better look at its roof…

…. and we popped in for a shufty.

As with most of the larger towns we passed through, Chatenois had its tower with a stork’s nest atop.

Tour Des Sorciers; it might have a stork at home, it might not

We found our Hotel Dontenville easily enough at the end of the main street.  The chap answering the door seemed a bit offhand and after yesterday night I felt rather deflated by the cramped and somewhat shabby room.

The wifi was fine, though

They seem to have put rather more effort into a sitting area on our landing.

We had plenty of time before supper (we were eating at the hotel) so we took a walk down the street in search for a bar to have a drink and play some crib.

Choice was limited, but we found a place with some outside tables and we had a relaxing time whilst I took a few euros off Bob comme d’habitude.

At around 7 the waitress warned us that she was about to close when we were about order a final drink; we assured her that we would be quick. She brought the drinks and then continued to sit and drink with and serve her mates at the next table, showing no sign of closing when we left at 7.20. This pissed us off and no tip was left.

We were the only people eating at the hotel which wasn’t very comfortable as the owners wife sat behind us at our computer. We were given no choice and I wasn’t impressed by the fatty three-meats stew and plate of indifferent salad. The bottle of Reisling was perfectly good though, it having travelled a full 100 metres from the winery just down the street.

After super we had a further wander around town, but failed to find another open bar. We did, though, find the strangest of gardens.

The sign on their post said “Dick”.

The Hotel Beysang’s restaurant was packed; I rather wished we had been staying there; it was listed in our notes as a place that Sherpa use.  Shame.

Anyway, I don’t want to end on a downer, so here’s another pic of that garden.