In order to escape the heat once more, this hike was another 4:30 am challenge. Which for us at the moment is not so much of a challenge anymore. It became already a habit. With climbing temperatures this week until 36 degrees, the mornings are the only way to hike without a heatstroke. As well with having still your animal friend around, nights are short at the moment anyway. On the pro side, we figured now out what kind of animal is keeping us awake at night. It is a young long-eared owl.
We do not know why an owl is sitting on trees in a residential district but it attracts many neighbors. As the animal is flying around, many people are going out on the street at night with a flashlight in order to figure out what is making this wired sound. I would have never guessed what kind of animal makes that kind of sound. Interesting is, that when we arrived at our breakfast spot during this hike, we heard the same owl sound. Sometimes you never actively heard or see something, but once you did it is reoccurring like never before.
Let me say some words over the hike. It was a 15 km, 4 hours, 400 meter high difference hike. It started and ended in Dobeln and it is following the Westweg. Which is a long distance hike through the Blackforest from Pforzheim to Basel. The Westweg is approximately 285 km long high-altitude hiking trail and was created in 1900 as the first long-distance hiking trail in Germany.
The best part of today’s hike been in the middle. For sure following 4 km of the Eyach River in the Eyach Valley. Also a highlight been the breakfast spot we found at the beginning of the Eyach Valley. The first and the last part from and to Dobeln is mainly forest road and not really pleasant to hike. Nevertheless, the hike is recommendable. At the end of the Valley it is crossing the Eyach Mühle, which is a restaurant that looked pretty nice. The menu was really inviting. As we crossed the restaurant at 9 am, we were not able to eat there.
