So apparently hiking all day makes you tired. I am learning so many new and interesting things on our trip. Also painful things, apparently my knees don't enjoy several kilometres of going downhill. Between that and Sancha's busted knee that dislikes going uphill we're pretty much restricted to flat surfaces now. Sucks to be our knees I guess.The hike itself was about 12km to 15km long, worked out by using our fingers as a makeshift ruler on the map and then measuring roughly where we had been. Judging by the amount of hurtyness we have the day after the hike I'm thinking it was more like 100km or so.
Our day started at about 9am when we left the hostel with our guide and group and headed to the Neustadt Train station. The train we would normally get on apparently had some sort of mechanical problem so we had to run to catch a different train so we could get to the main train station and get on to the train that would take us to near the Czech border. After making a dash for it, and almost missing our new train, we were on our way. Our guide also pointed out several things we missed on our previous train trip from Germany to Prague such as the Bastei Bridge, a large mountain fortress and the old German border crossing building which is now abandoned.
We hopped off the train at Schmilka, the second last stop, and then took the ferry over the Elbe to the town itself. The start of the walk wasn't pulling any punches either as these were steep, cobbled streets we made our way up until we were through the town. We proceeded up an ever increasingly steep sealed tar road, which eventually turned into a gravel path. This was the easiest part as it's the road to the restaurant at the top of Grosser Winterberg (literally Big Winter Mountain). Things got a bit tougher as we turned off this road and onto a gravelled hiking trial leading us further up the mountain and our group was slowly shedding excess jumpers and beanies from the exertion.
By the time we made it to the restaurant at Winterberg we were glad for the break as we'd been climbing uphill for several hours. We ate our packed lunch (cobbled together from the various breakfast ingredients at the hostel) and made the most of our time to sit down and rest. We also (briefly) saw a few of the sights as the restaurant has been there when it was a hunting lodge built in 1848 and the food was brought up in horse drawn carts (during the summer only) and kept in a special ice-house, which has now been turned into a small area with some information about the area.
We continued on after our lunch on a thankfully much flatter, but quite muddy trail and after a while reached a lookout where we could see down into a valley and a few of the other sandstone peaks in the park. The view was quite spectacular, yet a little freaky, as we are used to our National Parks and surrounding countryside being a little more brown. This was plush greenness as far as you could see and I kept thinking to myself that this would make an excellent Sherwood Forrest (preferably with a Robin Hood who can speak with an english accent)
A quick break for photos at the top and then we were off, down more muddy trails and several kilometres of downhill that completely wrecked my knees. Once we were at a more sensible elevation we eventually broke off the marked hiking trail to travel along an old smugglers path that was once used to move goods over the German and Czech border. We followed this for some time and reached several small white stones that mark the border and several signs warning us not to proceed. We waited around for some time for the border guard but no one showed up and we continued on, past a logging camp and a few memorials to the German inhabitants of this region to the town of Mezni Louka where we ate a hearty lunch of Goulash. With dumplings for me, and with mashed potato and a strange look from the waitress for Sancha. Washed down with several Czech beers we were ready to be on our way again.
Since we had just missed the bus back to the train station we decided to take a walk a little further down the road to Mezna, the previous stop to where we had lunch. We passed several monuments to the inhabitants of the region who had gone off to fight in various world wars and we eventually reached the town where most of out group parked themselves on the bench to wait for the bus while our guide and myself decided to explore the town. This didn't take long and not far down the road, past several abandoned buildings, we had hit the end of the town. We thought we would go and check out the kayaking that was down by the river, but the sign indicating that it was half a kilometre down a steep, windy path quickly put an end to that idea as our bus was due soon.
A quick bus ride back, a shoddy coffee at a hotel in Hrensko, then a ferry over to the train station and we were on our way back to Dresden. All of us were a little exhausted after our days trek but rather satisfied with our hike.
what awesome scenery. Hope your knees appreciated it.
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