Friday - Sunday, April 1 - 3 2011 (diary)

I am having a very quiet weekend. Undoubtedly I am by far the laziest person on the farm as far as manual tasks are concerned. Rod is mowing the lawns, David is fixing a leak in his caravan (he had a solar panel installed on its roof recently with its bolts not water tight secured) and Rick is cleaning the slippery moulded tiles in front of my cabin with a pressure hose. Renee slipped a few times at night walking on it.
But I have been busy on my laptop, preparing more photos to go with the six Black Forest walks I am putting online.

On April 1 the current Martinshof personnel held their "farewell party" with a walk through the Beukerstraat in Zutphen where it all began way back in 1936, and a dinner afterwards in the Wijnhuistoren. Sadly Martinshof as a separate entity is no more. After 65 years the Martinshof story has finally come to an end.

Sunday night I watched the cycle classic the Tour of Vlaanderen (Flanders in Belgium) on SBS TV. It was a great race this year with a sprint finish. Next weekend the famous Paris - Roubaix. I look forward watching that.

We still have frequent downpours of rain throughout the day and night. As I said before, we all quite like it as it keeps the air fresh and cool.

The six Black Forest walks details are now online.

Monday & Tuesday, April 4 & 5 2011 (Black Forest walks)

Absolutely amazing what you can do with the Adobe Photoshop (Elements) application. I took this photo while sitting in a moving train moments before entering one of the Höllental's railway tunnels. The initial photo was almost entirely black and you could barely see a thing on it, but with Photoshop I managed to bring the details out quite well.

During September last year (2010) the Höllental between Himmelreich and Höllsteig (Black Forest, Germany) was closed to all car, bicycle and pedestrian traffic for about 4 weeks, to do maintenace on the main road through it and to clean and secure the cliff faces on either side. The Jägerpfad walking trail along the stream was also improved.
So as a consequence I was unable to do this famous walk. Instead however I did the walk through the Löffeltal and Ravennaschlucht. Both these narrow valley and gorge descend into the upper end of the Höllental (at Höllsteig) and are, if anything, even more spectacular.