Ricky – Page 38

Schwarzenburg – Fribourg – Froidville bei Posieux

Once more there was thunder, lightning and rain as we stayed overnight in Schwarzenburg. And unfortunately, unlike the two previous nights, it didn’t stop as daylight broke the next morning. We ate breakfast slowly, packed our rucksacks slowly, accepted the kind offer from our hosts of a further cup of coffee, all whilst we waited, hoping the rain would stop. Eventually the rain became very light so we finally decided to set out, but an hour and a half later than our usual start time.

After around three kilometres of walking, we crossed the River Sense, and so passed from the predominantly Protestant Bern Canton into the predominantly Roman Catholic Fribourg Canton. Soon afterwards, as we climbed towards the village of Heitenried, the heavens opened once more with a vengeance. Our guidebook spoke of the wonderful views there were to be had around Heitenried – unfortunately we couldn’t see them 🙁

Protestants to the left - Roman Catholics to the right © Ricky Yates — St. Antoni – Protestants to the left – Roman Catholics to the right © Ricky Yates

What Heitenried did illustrate was the change in Christian affiliation with crossing the cantonal boundary – the village Church was Roman Catholic. But as we walked on, battling with soggy underfoot conditions, we eventually reached St. Antoni which is a two-Church village as the road sign clearly illustrates.

Swiss Reformed Church in St. Antoni © Ricky Yates

We ate our lunch, sheltering from the rain under the porch of the Reformed Church and took advantage again of their toilet facilities.

Roman Catholic Church, St. Antoni © Ricky Yates

Here is the Roman Catholic Church, looking back from the Jakobsweg on our way to the small town of Tafers.

Façade of the St. James Chapel, Tafers © Ricky Yates

It continued to rain off and on as we walked to Tafers where there is this chapel, dedicated to St. James, alongside the town’s Roman Catholic Church. The illustration on the façade tells the legend of the hen and rooster miracle from Santo Domingo de la Calzada in Spain.

Within the chapel is this baroque altarpiece with St. James in the centre, together St. John and St. Peter.

Although we had only walked about thirteen kilometres, a combination of starting out late and constantly battling the wet weather meant we both felt it was time to stop. Within the main Church was a notice giving details of five homes within Tafers, who offered Bed and Breakfast accommodation to pilgrims. The first three didn’t answer Sybille’s phone call, but the fourth one did – a widow and retired archaeologist. It meant a walk of at least a further kilometre, nearly all uphill 🙁 but we were made most welcome and had a peaceful night.

The next morning, Tuesday 12^th August, dawned fine and sunny. We walked back downhill to the centre of Tafers and went to buy lunch supplies from the Coop supermarket. As we were leaving the supermarket, I noticed a sign saying that on Friday 15^th August, the store would be geschlossen for Mariä Himmelfahrts Tag. We both agreed that we needed to make sure we had bought adequate food supplies the previous day, so as not to be caught out finding all shops shut on Friday. Fortunately as it turned out, on Thursday 14^th, we crossed into the Protestant Vaad Canton, meaning that the next day, all shops were open 🙂

Crossing the linguistic border © Ricky Yates

After walking for about five kilometres, we reached the edge of the city of Fribourg and another boundary, this time a linguistic one. As this sign illustrates, we crossed from German-speaking Switzerland into Francophone Switzerland. This was to be the last time we saw a sign saying Wanderweg.

Not only does the language change, so does the architecture. Over the following days we said to each other on several occasions that it would be very easy to believe that we were in France, rather than Switzerland.

Fribourg with the Cathedral of St. Nicholas © Ricky Yates

This is the view that greeted us as we descended downhill into Fribourg. We crossed the bridge and then headed for the Roman Catholic St Nicholas Cathedral.

The 'pilgrim corner' of Fribourg Cathedral © Ricky Yates — The ‘pilgrim corner’ of Fribourg Cathedral © Ricky Yates

Within the Cathedral is a ‘pilgrim corner’ with details of possible accommodation and a rubber stamp for our ‘pilgrim passports’.

The Cathedral also has some wonderful stained glass such as this depiction of the visit of the Wise Men to the infant Jesus.

The slaughter of the innocents © Ricky Yates

However, it is very rare to see the slaughter of the innocents, (Matthew 2. 16-18), illustrated in stained glass!

Whilst exploring the Cathedral, we had a different linguistic experience. Sybille was trying to photograph one of the stained glass windows when a man standing behind her said ‘pozor!’ to his wife, telling her not to get in Sybille’s way. ‘Pozor‘ is Czech for ‘attention!’ or ‘look out!’ “That couple must be Czech”, Sybille said to me. I then saw the back of the T-shirt the man was wearing, which advertised a café in Brno 🙂

Ancient footbridge over the River Glâne © Ricky Yates

That afternoon, we first had to walk from the city centre, through the western suburbs of Fribourg, and then through the adjacent town of Villar-sur-Glâne, before finally once more reaching the countryside. The Chemin de Saint-Jacques, as I now must call our pilgrim way, descended into a wooded valley before crossing the River Glâne on this delightful bridge which is clearly several hundred years old.

Maison-des-Anges, Froidville bei Posieux © Ricky Yates

For once, our accommodation that night was neither a long way off-route or up a hill. Instead, it was literally three minutes, almost level walking, from the Chemin – the Maison-des-Anges in the hamlet of Froidville bei Posieux. The ‘House of Angels’ is a very French-style Chambres d’hôtes as you can probably tell from this photograph, with pictures, carvings and statues of angels everywhere! It made for a very pleasant end to our first day of walking through Francophone Switzerland.

Route from Tafers to Froidville bei Posieux 16km

Einigen – Schwarzenburg

My pilgrim wife observing the local livestock © Ricky Yates

After a night punctuated by further thunder, lightning and rain, we awoke to grey skies the next morning and heard the pitter-patter of rain falling once more whilst we were eating breakfast. But just as we were resigning ourselves to a wet day, blue sky began to appear above the hill behind where we were staying. Our host assured us that where the blue sky was appearing, was the direction from which the weather always came. Fortunately, her forecast proved true and we enjoyed a dry and increasingly sunny day.

We first walked three kilometres back to the main Jacobsweg at Gwatteg, passing along this interesting path which traverses a low ridge with wonderful views on either side.

The Jacobsweg across Switzerland is waymarked as long-distance footpath 4 as here on this signpost at Gwattegg. Route 4 in the direction to Santiago is additionally marked with a blue border and golden scallop shell. Route 4 in the opposite direction just has the plain green background.

Around lunchtime, we reached the village of Amsoldingen with this delightful pre-Romanesque Church.

Interior of Amsoldingen Church © Ricky Yates

Since the Reformation, it has belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church and at some point, the interior must have been re-ordered with the font made the central focus.

Fresco in Amsoldingen Church © Ricky Yates

However, one delightful pre-reformation fresco has been preserved.

In the afternoon, we walked on towards the small town of Wattenwil. Sybille had earlier phoned ahead to a farm outside Wattenwil, and booked for us to schlaf im Stroh/sleep on straw, a uniquely Swiss form of accommodation on farms. Click on the link for an explanation in English.

Fortunately, as we reached the outskirts of Wattenwil, there was a poster advertising the self-same farm, Erlebnis Hofmatt, with a map of how to reach it from the centre of the town. But the poster also said that if your legs were too tired, and mine by then certainly were 🙁 , then all you needed to do was to walk to the Church in the town centre and then phone the farmer who would drive down and collect you. We took the easy option 🙂

Whilst there were two German families staying in other accommodation at the farm, we had the upstairs loft with its long bed of straw to ourselves. Herr Künzi laid out two blankets on the straw and gave us pillows and then all we had to do was spread our respective sleeping bags on the blankets. Showers and toilets were provided and we had a most comfortable night’s sleep and an excellent breakfast the following morning.

Looking back to Erlebnis Hofmatt © Ricky Yates

Once more there was rain overnight but it had all but stopped raining by the time we climbed the hill from the farm next morning, making our way to rejoin the Jakobsweg. This was the view behind us with Erlebnis Hofmatt, the building in the bottom right of the photograph.

Our final view of the Thunersee © Ricky Yates

Whilst this was our final view of the Thunersee.

Just before midday, as you can see, we reached the Church at Riggisberg. It being Sunday 10^th August, the last of the tidying up following the morning service was taking place. Here, as with nearly every Swiss Reformed Church that we visited, there were toilets open and available for use. Most Roman Catholic Churches were open but rarely had toilets. This raised a question in my mind. Does a Protestant sermon take longer than the time it takes to celebrate a Roman Catholic mass, hence the need for toilet facilities for Protestants? 🙂 My other suggestion, which Sybille declared, won the prize for the worst joke of the week, was that clearly the Swiss Reformed Church were ‘flush’ with money!

The street called 'Jakobsweg' © Ricky Yates — The street called ‘Jakobsweg’ © Ricky Yates

From Riggisberg, we climbed further to reach neighbouring Rüeggisberg. We were both amused to find that the residential street leading to the centre of the small town, was actually called ‘Jakobsweg‘ 🙂 What this photograph also reveals is something that was to catch us out later that afternoon. Not every waymark on the Jakobsweg has the route 4 sign on it. Some intervening signs, as here, just say ‘Wanderweg‘. The trouble is, other waymarked routes are also just signposted ‘Wanderweg‘, meaning it is possible to end up on the wrong ‘Wanderweg‘ 🙁

Priory ruins at Rüeggisberg © Ricky Yates

In Rüeggisberg are these remains of what was once a very extensive priory. It originally belong to the Abbey at Cluny in France and was the first Cluniac house to be built in the German-speaking world. The priory was abandoned in 1532 when much of the town was destroyed by fire. Now only this small section remains standing, together with some sections of the foundations that reveal the size of the original building.

After eating our bread, cheese and cold meat lunch, sitting alongside the priory ruins, we walked on, now predominantly down hill, towards our goal for the day, the town of Schwarzenburg, where Sybille had already made a phone booking for B and B accommodation that night. By now the weather had turned quite warm and sunny. Reaching the little village of Wislisau, I spotted a very nice bar and beer garden and led Sybille into temptation by suggesting having some liquid refreshment.

The beer was cool and refreshing, but immediately afterwards, we made the mistake of following a Wanderweg sign which wasn’t one for the Jakobsweg and were at least two kilometres off course before realising our mistake. An enquiry at a farm confirmed we were on the wrong track and guidance was given for us to head back down a minor road to the main road and then turn left. We did eventually make it to our accommodation in Schwarzenburg, but we could have done without that detour 🙁

Walking with my pilgrim wife

Sybille taking a photograph alongside the Thunersee © Ricky Yates

My sincere apologies that it is exactly one month since I last posted anything here on my blog. Long-standing followers will know that this is an extremely rare occurrence. Over the next couple of weeks, I do hope to write several new blogposts to compensate.

As I explained in responding to my Liebster Blogger Awarder Emily, answering her Question 3, I’ve spent two weeks of August, walking with my pilgrim wife Sybille. During that time, I had virtually no access to the internet – hence the absence of blog posts. I only returned to Prague last Thursday evening and this afternoon and evening is the first real opportunity I’ve had to compile a new post.

When Sybille first planned her pilgrimage, walking from Prague to Santiago de Compostela, the idea that I would join and walk with her for two weeks of my annual leave in August, seemed perfectly simple. But as the time for doing so drew near, the practical reality, became somewhat more complicated.

Sybille is deliberately not walking to a set timetable. Therefore, exactly where she would be by the time I was set to join her, was always going to be a crucial issue. My original plan was to fly to a major centre and then use public transport. As the time of my planned departure approached, flying to Geneva looked like the best option. But then Sybille said, ‘Why not drive?’ I did the arithmetic and found that the cost of petrol, together with a Swiss motorway vignette, was actually no more than the cost of a return flight from Prague to Geneva. The only problem then, was finding a safe place where I could leave my car for two weeks.

The solution to my problem came in the form of Sarah, a priest in the Swiss Old Catholic Church / Christkatholische Kirche der Schweiz / Eglise catholique-chrétienne de Suissean, who is an online friend of Sybille. Sarah and her husband Michael, live in Langenthal, north of Bern. So on Thursday 7^th August, I drove from Prague to Langenthal and parked my car, by prior arrangement organised by Sarah, in the private car park of the nearby Swiss Reformed Church called Zwinglihaus. Numerous jokes have since been cracked about how reformed the ‘Carly’ is now, having sat there for two weeks 🙂

Once I’d transferred my rucksack, together with a bag of various things Sybille had asked me to bring for her, from my car to Michael and Sarah’s car, they then drove me south to Merligen where Sybille was staying that night. Then they insisted on taking us both out to a nearby restaurant for a most enjoyable evening meal of fish from the adjacent Thunersee, washed down with a most quaffable locally produced white wine.

Sybille and I spent that first night sleeping in this little cabin in the grounds of the guest house of the Christusträger Communität, a small group of Lutheran brothers. You can click on this link to find out more about what they do and use ‘Google translate’ if you cannot read German 🙂

Christian guest house in Merligen © Ricky Yates

This is the main guest house where we had breakfast the following morning.

View across the Thunersee from Merligen © Ricky Yates

And this is the view that greeted us that morning.

After breakfast, we set off to walk together along the Jacobswege Schweiz, heading towards Thun. Our route followed the side of the Thunersee which meant it was basically flat, a great bonus for me on my first day of walking!

We reached Thun early in the afternoon. Below is a close up view of the beautifully decorated covered bridge which you can see in the foreground of the photograph above. The amount of water passing under the bridge is indicative of the very heavy rainfall that Switzerland had experienced in the previous few weeks and through which Sybille had been walking. We were therefore both thankful that our first day walking together was fine and sunny.

Covered bridge with floral decoration in Thun © Ricky Yates

We walked on out of Thun, now on the opposite side of the lake, visiting this delightful Swiss Reformed Church on the way. One of the most pleasing aspects of our pilgrimage through Switzerland was that nearly every Church we passed was open and welcoming to visitors. In several of them, the lights were on sensors which came on when we walked in and presumably went off soon after we left!

However, that first day, we did struggle to find somewhere to stay overnight. The tourist office in Thun could only offer us a ridiculously expensive hotel room and the B & B in a village five km out of Thun, which would have been ideal, was already fully booked as Sybille discovered when she phoned earlier in the day.

Fortunately, Sybille then had the brilliant idea to phone another B & B in Einigen which appeared in her accommodation list because it lies on an alternative route that involves taking the ferry from Merligen across the Thunersee. The answer to Sybille’s enquiry was positive so, although it meant a three kilometre diversion from our route with the last section inevitably being uphill, the accommodation, host and view made it more than worthwhile.

Later that evening, a thunderstorm broke, followed by a rainbow which I just managed to capture in this photograph taken from our bedroom balcony.

Rainbow over the Thunersee © Ricky Yates

Hora Ríp

Hora Ríp is a prominent hill, located about 48 km/30 miles north of Prague. It protrudes from the otherwise relatively flat Central Bohemian Plain, and is very visible and easily accessible from the D8, the Prague-Dresden motorway. Of course, there should be a hácek, a little hook, above the ‘R’ in ‘Ríp’, as there should be above the ‘c’ in ‘hácek‘. But as I have explained several times previously, the set-up of this blog cannot cope with many Czech diacritics and instead renders them as ‘?’ 🙁

Wearing my geographer hat, I can tell you that Hora Ríp is the eroded remains of a former volcano. It consists of a variety of igneous rocks that are somewhere between 34 and 23 million years old. But for Czech people, Hora Ríp is believed to be the place where the first Slav people viewed the land and decided to settle here. So it has a great cultural significance.

Climbing Hora Ríp has been on my ‘bucket list’, (to use a very American expression 😀 ), for quite some time. Yesterday evening, I duly did so. My motivation was twofold. As well as wanting to tick it off my ‘bucket list’, I also wanted to see if I could still manage several kilometres of hill walking, being aware that my left leg has been giving me problems in recent days. I don’t want to set off in two weeks time, seeking to climb Swiss mountains with Sybille, if I cannot walk up a much lower Czech hill 🙁

It took me less than an hour, to drive out of Prague to the village of Vražkov, despite having to cope with rush hour traffic and various road works. I parked my car off the road at the edge of the village, and set off along the yellow waymarked route towards the summit. Near the summit, I came to the point where the red waymarked route from the village of Ctineves, joins from the right. The sign at this junction of paths, declared that it is only a further 0.5km to the summit. I have to say that it was one of the the longest 0.5km that I have walked in a very long time 🙂

Looking back towards Vražkov from near the summit of Hora Ríp © Ricky Yates

However, just before the summit, there was this wonderful view, back towards Vražkov and beyond.

Vražkov, as seen from Hora Ríp © Ricky Yates

And by using the zoom feature on my camera, I took this picture of Vražkov. If you look closely, you can just see my car, parked on the opposite side of the road from the large white house on the right of the photograph.

The view north-west from Hora Ríp © Ricky Yates

This view is towards the north-west, with the mountains that form the Czech-German border, in the distance.

The pub is unfortunately zavreno © Ricky Yates — The bar is unfortunately ‘*zavreno*‘ © Ricky Yates

I had read that there was a bar at the summit, offering liquid refreshment to those who have exerted physical effort to climb there. There is – but it isn’t open at 19.00 on Wednesday evenings in July 🙁

Likewise, the ancient Romanesque rotunda of Saint George, built by Sobeslav I in 1126, was also not open. However, despite both of these disappointments, I still very much enjoyed my ascent and decent of Hora Ríp. And as my leg feels better today than in recent days, I hopefully will still be able to walk with Sybille, through Switzerland and into France, in two weeks time.

The Romanesque rotunda of Saint George © Ricky Yates

My Liebster Blogger Award – part two

As promised in my first post eight days ago, here are my answers to the last six questions set by my Liebster Blogger Award nominator Emily, the owner of the blog Czechesotans.

6. What drives you crazy?

The addiction that so many people seem to have to their mobile/cell/smart phones. In particular, the number of people I see here in the Czech Republic, who talk on their mobile phones whilst driving, even though it is completely illegal to do so. What drives me even more crazy is that I’ve never yet seen the police stop someone doing so, even though here in Prague, there are always plenty of police around and they seem to stop people quite readily for relatively petty offences.

It is impossible to be in full control of a vehicle if someone is at the same time, using a hand-held mobile phone. Yet I regularly see mothers doing so, with children in their car; truck drivers who carry an even greater responsibility given the size and weight of their vehicles, also doing so; and when travelling along the D1 Prague-Brno motorway, vehicles passing me in breach of the maximum speed limit, with their drivers talking on their phones.

As I’ve previously highlighted on this blog, even when not driving, constantly talking on a mobile phone is highly anti-social. I continue to see, predominantly but not exclusively women, out walking with their children and/or their dogs, yet with their necks bent forty-five degrees whilst they talk away to some friend on the other end of their mobile phone. What message does that send to the children/dogs? Quality time with Mummy?

Just this morning, I saw another example of anti-social mobile phone use. A woman talking on her mobile whilst at the same time, passing her shopping through the supermarket checkout. If I had been the checkout operator, I would just have stopped serving the woman, until she got off her phone! Being a supermarket checkout operator is a mind-numbing enough without being treated to such rudeness by a customer.

Yes – mobile phones are useful but they shouldn’t control our lives and their use should never endanger the lives of others.

7. Where do you do most of your blogging?

This one is relatively easy to answer. Almost exclusively whilst sitting at my desk in my office in the Chaplaincy Flat. Since May 2012, I’ve had a laptop computer which has enabled me to compile text when I’m elsewhere. But in more than two years, I think I’ve only twice successfully compiled and posted a blog post from somewhere other than my office.

8. How do you spend your free time?

This question raises an interesting issue as I don’t have a job with set hours or even a job description. Officially, I hold an office – I am the Anglican Chaplain in the Czech Republic. As I’m subject to canon law, I do have certain responsibilities that I must fulfil, but how I use my time is very much at my discretion.

Therefore, what is work and what is pleasure is frequently blurred. And I often move from one to the other and back again, several times during the day. Whilst I do regularly have to work unsocial hours – evenings and weekends; unlike many others, I can take ‘time-off’ during the day on weekdays.

I am actively encouraged to take one full ‘day-off’ each week which is normally Monday. Today is Monday, and what am I doing? Writing this blog post! So maybe that answers the question 🙂 I do also like to get out and walk around and explore various parts of Prague, especially the parks. And frequently these walks end by finding somewhere to have ‘a cool glass of something’ 😉

9. What is something cool you’ve found?

As in my previous answer, I’m adept at quite regularly finding ‘a cool glass of something’. But I don’t think that’s what Emily my nominator, meant 😀 Quite honestly, as a British male who is now the wrong side of sixty, I don’t think I’m going find anything that’s ‘cool’, in the sense that my thirty-something American female nominator intended 🙁

10. If you could switch places with someone for a day, who would it be?

I have two responses to this question. The first is that I don’t really want to switch places with anyone, even for a day. I’m perfectly happy being who I am, where I am. My second reaction is that if I did switch places, I would want to do so for far longer than twenty-four hours, in order to institute radical and permanent change. For example, to take over from Putin and put Russia on a totally different political path, in contrast to the confrontational one that is currently being pursued. That would certainly need plenty more time.

11. What gets your creative juices flowing?

With regard to this blog, it has often been current events and the reaction of other people to them, that has suddenly got my fingers tapping rapidly on my keyboard. The resulting blog posts have also usually attracted plenty of comments. Three examples come to mind.

Back in November 2012, I just had to write about the reactions to the result of the American Presidential Election that I was reading on social media, by right-wing conservative friends back in the USA, of a few of my American friends living here in the Czech Republic. It resulted in my post entitled ‘Two days after President Obama’s re-election‘, in which I challenged some of the absurd things that I was reading.

Earlier this year, the Russian takeover of the Crimea peninsula prompted me to quite rapidly write about ‘The Ukraine crisis as seen from the Czech Republic‘. It is a post that has since received many appreciative comments and unfortunately, continues to remain highly apposite in view of the very sad events of the last few days.

The most recent example was at Easter this year, when over fifty ‘public figures’, (for which read, ‘people full of their own self-importance’), declared that David Cameron referring to the United Kingdom as a Christian country, ‘fosters alienation and division in our society’. In response, I immediately wrote the post entitled, ‘The militant atheists are at it again‘. I can tell you, militant atheists and their pronouncements, very quickly get my creative juices going 😉

And finally…..

Thank you Emily, for your nomination and making me answer all these questions. And can I add that your own nomination is also highly deserved.