Sunday we decided to go for a hike, because the weather was beautiful. I decided I'd try to find the way I had gone before with the group of hikers, to go to St. Crischona again. I sort of remembered the way, we just didn't end up going up the first mega steep hill to the lookout point. The wanderweg signs that point you to St. Crischona take you up a slightly less steep, but possibly longer hill. At any rate, we ended up going through the same fields at the top of the hill that I had hiked through before, so we made it to the same place in the end.
We hiked along the edge of these fields, where people seem to have weekend 'country' huts that they go to. I couldn't tell if they were set up so people could stay overnight, or if they just went for the day. Next to one of them we saw a small pasture with goats that were being naughty and nibbling the neighbors hedge. One of them had made a valiant attempt to climb through the fence to get at some particularly tasty morsel. As we were standing there chuckling about this, a couple walked by and went into the gate for that little hut, then they went down along their hedge, and chased the goats away. I photographed them just after they'd leapt away from the strange noises the man was making and had turned to look back at him.
We stopped at a bench along the edge of some woods, where I took this photo of some cows gathered around the one tree in their pasture. It looks like they cut the hay from the fields then put up electric fences to divide them up, and put their cows out to graze. They have these big water tanks on wheels that they park out in the pasture, since there is no other water source out there. I was thinking that there was no way the cows we had when I was growing up would have stayed in - the barbed wire fences we strung up could barely even keep them in - they were very 'exploratory' cows, prime examples of thinking the grass is always greener on the other side.
The church at St. Crischona was actually open today (maybe because it was Sunday), so we were able to go in and see the stained glass, and were also able to climb to the top of their bell tower for a great view of the area. It was a very hazy day, however, so it was somewhat limited. I got a great shot of the church with a bunch of roses in front, and one of the mostly harvest themed stained glass inside. You can see the window just under the clock, which was as high as you could go up the tower. We were able to see how the tiling for the roof was done in that room, which I have never seen before. Each tile has a nubbin off the back side of it, that rests on the top of a slat of wood underneath and that is all that keeps it from sliding off the roof. We were thinking that wouldn't be very safe in high winds, but I'm not sure that is much of a problem around here.
After enjoying the view, we headed back down around through the woods to the town of Bettingen, where we happened upon a farm stand that was selling fresh picked apples. There was no-one there to watch it, just a scale to weigh your apples on, and a locked cash box. The honor system actually seems to work here, which is very nice. We picked up some apples there, and MrB requested an apple pie for dessert.
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