Gorges de Loup & Germany

This morning we didn’t wake up until 8:10am. I wanted to be at the Hohllay Cave car park asap as it’s tiny and as it’s not raining I thought it would fill up quick.
We quickly downed our teas and coffees and put the bed away, I said don’t worry about anything else yet let’s just get there and get parked up then we can have breakfast.
Just before 9am we left our free park up and drove the 6 miles to the car park where we would begin our hike. We were the first ones there and reversed in to the first of 8 bays so we could just drive out when we left. Then we sat in the back for an hour drinking teas and coffees and I made a picnic ready to go on our hike. This time we would be going prepared.
At 10:30am we left Wanda loaded up with food, camera gear and a bladder bag full of water and set off through the forest towards Hohllay Cave where we went yesterday. The temperature was perfect for a long hike, around 20°c, not too hot but not cold.
We did visit the cave again just to get some pictures in the dry but didn’t hang around too long as we had a fair bit of walking to do. An hour later we came to what is known as the Labyrinth a steep set of gorges with a narrow passage way leading between them, the colours were amazing and because of the rain yesterday and it being so deep the air felt cold, sticky and clammy. Once again we had a multicoloured carpet of leaves lining our way and to leave the labyrinth we had to ascend a stone staircase.
These were the steepest steps we had done so far and just as we thought we were coming to the top some more would appear. Then we started going back down on more steps and it was pretty treacherous after yesterday’s rain with the damp leaves making one wrong step possibly fatal. There’s no hand rails here, no caution signs and no health and safety gone mad. This is nature as it was intended.
Once back at ground level we followed the stream to the entrance to the Gorge de Loup.
I imagined this place to be a network of caves and passageways like we went through the other day but unfortunately it wasn’t. Our first task after descending a few steps to get into the gorge was climb the biggest stone stairway we had ever seen going almost vertically up the side of the cliff face, it seriously made our legs burn. Once at the top we were on a plateau with an amazing view of the valley below and there was a picnic area so as we were almost half way through we stopped here for some food.
We had now walked 5.5km and most of it had been uphill so we knew a lot of it would be downhill on the way back even though we were going a different way.
Leaving the picnic area we walked across the top of the plateau and then down a steep stairway that was just like the one we had come up on the other side. This took us back into the gorge and after walking around a few bends and up some more steps we found ourselves back at the beginning of the Gorges de Loup. It didn’t seem all it was hyped up to be on google so I was really glad we did the 12km hike the other day.
From the Gorge we turned right away from the way we came and this way would take us around in a big loop back to Hohllay Cave through the forest. It was a beautiful walk with the autumnal colours and the little stream running next to us and before long we were back at Hohllay Cave and then it was just another 800 meters back to Wanda.
It was now 3pm and we had just walked 14.1km. That’s 8.76 miles in English with 225 meters of climbing. We were pretty tired but not tired enough to go back to our camp spot we’d had for the last 2 nights so we thought we’d try our luck and try to get to another free place and get some water so we could both have showers tonight. Yesterday I had found somewhere on park4night and as the crow flies it was 35 miles away. As we’re not flying we had to use the roads and 85 miles later we were in country number 5, Germany, at a town called Polche that seems to be one huge Motorhome dealership and there is a free dump station and it’s €0.10 per litre of water.
This is also another free place snd we got the last Motorhome spot when we arrived at 4:30pm. Wanda looks incredibly small next to most of the motorhomes here. The small ones are the size of a coach back home, the big ones are just immense.
By 7pm we had, had dinner and we were both struggling to keep our eyes open watching TV, so I set the bed up to watch it in bed instead and then we just fell asleep.Read more