Wernigerode

A bit of an adventure off the rails this morning as the middle section of our trip was a rail replacement bus service (Halberstadt-Wernigarode). To be fair it was relatively painless, but the bus itself was absolutely packed!

Wernigarode sits on the northern edge of the Harz Mountains, with a fairytale castle sitting above the town. The town itself is full of gothic and half-timbered houses which are immaculate and quaint...but do give the whole town a 'film set' quality that makes it seem not quite real. Nonetheless, it is beautiful, and was a nice place to sit and have a pint after the bus journey.

Our hotel for the night was in the next town along, just 10 minutes by train - the small town of Ilsenburg. This too was nestled in the mountainside but was far less touristy and felt rather more authentic, albeit small! We're stopping off to take advantage of its location on the edge of the Harz National Park for a bit of hiking tomorrow. The whole region has a fab hiking path called the Witches Trail, but we need about a week to do that, sadly. We also passed a cake/pretzel van - literally, like an ice cream van he pulled up on a road side, tooted his horn and people came out to buy!

Beer Index (Wernigerode) - €5.40/0.5lLäs mer