Once again we got off the train and then took a ferry across the river. This time the ferry was a motor-less platform hanging from a cable hooked to the bank up river. When the ferry was loaded they'd flip the rudder to one side and let the current move the ferry across the river. The cable was connected to the ferry at the stern and it ran over the top to a set of "goal posts" at the front with a little slider that allowed the cable to flip from one side to the other depending upon whether the ferry was going left or right. I thought it was a pretty ingenious design.
We had a reservation for the night in the castle overlooking the village. The castle itself was full, so our room was in a white gastehaus in the upper left of the photo. The castle and gastehaus were accessed via an extremely steep walkway that zigged and zagged up the hill. They used a golf cart on steroids to haul supplies up and down the path.
We dropped our main backpacks in the room and then hit the trail with the smaller day-pack. The path out of town started out as a cobblestone road and then slowly gave way to hard-pack gravel. We promptly came to a dam and were expecting another ferry, but there was only a boat rental place for those who wanted to paddle around the lake. It was also a rendezvous point for the local search and rescue team and they had a small diorama showing off their services. We thought of our friend Merry who does search and rescue back home.
Most of the outbound trail was through deciduous forest on a wide trail with a gradual incline. The trail eventually crossed a few roads, left the park, and went through a farmer's field. The variety on the European trails is amazing -- creeks, ponds, woods, villages, fields, rocks, overlooks, rivers, and restaurants. They don't offer the solitude or grandure of some of the trails back home, but they offer a much wider range of terrain and scenery.
As we started to close the loop we came back along the Elbe River, but on a rocky ridge several hundred feet up. We crossed over the Bastei Bridge -- a tourist attraction dating back to the 1850s. The bridge is a collection of stone arches that runs parallel to the river through the stone pillars on the ridge top. Its sole purpose is to provide an overlook for the river and villages below, and it does an excellent job. I thought the stonework was noteworthy and saw that the footing for one of the main arches was, itself, an arch between two rock faces. Slick.
From one of the overlooks near the bridge I was able to capture another shot of the ferry and you can see how the cable is rigged to run over the goal posts.
We're just in Rathen for one day, so tomorrow we need to head off to our next destination. We'd talked about going to Gorlitz, but didn't get a response from any of the pensions we'd sent email to. Prague is the next site on our (very loose) agenda, so we're going to catch an early train there and see what kind of lodging we can find at the tourist information booth.
Below is a map showing most of our track for the hike -- I forgot to turn on the GPS till after were a ways down the trail, so the first part is missing.
View 2009.09.14.track in a larger map
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