Day 5: Hiking the Säbelthomaweg
Today, we plan to embark on a 4.5-hour hike along the Säbelthomaweg. We head down to the underground car park to pick up our car.
The temperature is a frosty minus seven degrees celsius (-7c), but the deep blue sky is adorned with a glorious winter sun that shines low.
Of course, we drive with the roof down, thanks to my well-prepared co-driver! It's probably as cold as you can still tolerate and enjoy open-top motoring.
It is a short but fun drive, with the Black Forest all around us.
We find paid parking at the trail head easily enough.
Parked at the trail head
It is a costly €8 to park here for the length of our hike.
We gear up for the cold but dry weather we'll experience and head off.
Today we'll be walking among lots of cross country skiing routes.
Passing the only bear we'll find here in the forest.
The hike today is entirely within forest trails with a light dusting of snow and ice.
Stopping off to enjoy the winter landscape.
The route isn't always the easiest to follow, and we make good use of our AllTrails app to keep on track.
Passing a frozen lake.
The route sometimes takes us through a clearing in the forest – that usually has one or two farm buildings or houses in it.
Despite the trail being entirely on forest tracks, there is a consistent climb along the entire route.
We launch our drone, which we carry.
To view the vastness of the forest all around us and the frozen lake we passed earlier.
As late afternoon approaches, the sun – low in the sky – shines through the trees.
We reach Windeck the top of today's route – at 1,209 meters – a climb of around 500 meters from our car. And despite being remote, we have much faster internet here than we are getting down in Freiburg or our hotel!
High speed 5G on the mountain
Passing the top of a ski route cable car.
Time to head down the mountain – most of it on the actual cross-country ski routes.
Passing many farms as we get down to town level.
On our way home we stop off at our Shell fuel-stop to top up.
We hope our car won't get too used to this fuel!
Back at our hotel, we clean the grime off our number plates, so cars following us are clear that we're not local. To the best of our knowledge we haven't made any mistakes, but it's no harm to let people know.
Now off to enjoy a New Year's Eve meal and city fireworks later.
Stats
| Location | Litres | €/litre | Total € | Fuel Type | Octane |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freiburg, Germany | 44.35 | €2.009 | €89.10 | Shell V-Power | 100 |
Today we did 33 km over 0:53 hours, with an average speed of 38 km/h, consuming 8.9 litres/100 km.
