Thursday May 5, 2005, 75 km (47 miles) – Total so far: 2,046 km (1,271 miles)

This morning we’d planned to do some essential shopping, mailing home of maps, etc. only to be informed by the hotel staff that today is a national holiday and almost everything is closed, we don’t even have any food. We managed to pick up some nasty prefab sandwiches and a reasonable local map from a filling station and pushed on through a very rainy Schwarzwald.

What we could see of the scenery was magnificent. Shame we spent most of the day in clouds.

We’ve checked into an authentic German gasthaus for a budget-busting €€78 a night. As I write this I’m sampling the local beer from the mini-bar. Fürstliche Pils – a nice drop.

We covered our 2,000th km today.

Ebnet, a village east of Freiburg, the higher mountains are hidden in low cloud

The houses are distinctly different to those on the French side of the border

We descended to a the small villages of Glas-Hütte and Hexenloch-mühle

And climbed through a dark dense forest to Wolf-loch

Church in the village of Urach