Backlands Hike

For a Rainy Day

A few days ago I mentioned an outing that concluded with a hike in pretty Swiss scenery. Today being wet and dreary, it is nice to recall that day. We were driving home and saw a sign about a river gorge, so spontaneously stopped. A little way up the trail was this cascading waterfall.

 

And - wouldn't you know - bridges. sigh...

Rocks ground out these bowl shapes. There were numbers of them.

More bridges

Then  up the stream was a former mill.

 

...with a millstone you could try to turn. We read that it took three hours - with a much bigger stone than this - to grind 100 kilos of flour by water power, but they were using this mill until after the war, up to 1945.

After more upward climbing through forest, we came to a pond, farm fields looking across to Lichtenstein and its castle, and pleasant vistas.

A small dam....

....which made this pond.

Grazing land

In the niche between the trees, above the city at the foot of the mountains, is the Lichtenstein castle., that white spot you see in about the centre of the picture.

In the middle of this field we walked across was this water shed. It had a cistern inside to water cattle.

Quite laboriously. If you want your children to be busy and out of trouble you would give them this job, because it would take awhile.

Behold a river gorge. "Somebody" mentioned bridge in connection with the tree trunk across the gorge. I declined to believe it.

An example of highly sophisticated engineering technology.

A so-pretty path

EEEK! Until one gets to these. It was wobbly and had loose boards and was forever long.

Then we were out of the gorge and in civilisation with pretty flowers all over.

The walking path continued up the hill in the right side of the picture.

Behold, pretty flowers.

We had dinner in the countryside and got a colorful sunset on the way home.

 

 

Tomorrow is Switzerland's 925th birthday - Independence Day here. (The first time I came to visit Switzerland was it's 900th birthday.) Already fireworks are going off in anticipation. Maria picked a very nice hymn for our service today to complement the prayers offered for the country. See TLH 575 - everyone should learn and sing it regularly, in his own language.