Sunday 19th September 2004 Schmöckwitz. Visit to Swiss Saxony by car

View of the Bastei rocks - my photo

9.3° C. Sunny spells rainshowers. Had a day off. Did the chores first then went out for a drive in the car. I’d noted in my Michelin guide that there was a scenic hilly area to the east of Dresden and the start of the motorway to Dresden, the A113, was only just a few kilometres away from where we were moored. We took the route south through Eichwalde and into Könings Wüsterhausen to get the A10 then the A13, the continuation south of the A113 out of Berlin. There were three lots of roadworks where they were doing carriageway repairs, in one place the destruction of the other carriageway was so complete that Mike said he thought they were still building the A13! We drove almost into the city centre of Dresden

View of the Bastei rocks - my photo

then turned to run east towards Bishofswerfda, then south through small villages in among some lovely undulating low hills. We paused for lunch, parked in a section of old road kept as a parking area. It was almost filled with parked cars, but no one was around and we were in the middle of a forest. People came back to their cars later with carrier bags full of something - probably mushrooms. The place we’d come to see, the Bastei viewpoint in Swiss Saxony, was not very far down the same road. We parked the car on a

Bastei - Wikimedia photo by Zairon 

car park that charged 2.50 Eu for the first two hours and a further 5.50 Eu for any time after that. It was the only place to park. We took the camera and headed off down the road with crowds of other walkers and met crowds of other walkers on their way back. Busy place. The viewpoint over the Elbe was reached by lots of sets of steps running downhill to a bridge which linked several sandstone stacks together. Looking over the edge there was a sheer drop of several hundred feet to the rocks below. On the left side was a reconstruction of a fortress, called Felsenburn Neurathen, which was there in the middle ages. They charged 1,50 Eu for a fifteen minute trek up and down more steps linking more of the columns of sandstone. We

Formation called Monch at Bastei - Wikimedia photo by FunkBrothers

continued downhill to look at the rest of the cliffs and watched the paddle-wheeled trip boat, Leipzig, coming down the river, then a tethered ferryboat took about fifty people back to their cars on the far bank. The steps were a real killer for a flatlander, although Mike had no real problems, I was puffing well and sweltering before I got back to the level of the fortress. We decided to give the excursion a miss and went back to the car. We’d been away almost an hour and twenty minutes. Paid our 2,50 Eu and set off back via Bad Schandau down on the banks of the Elbe - and within a few kilometres of the Czech border. The villages in the tiny steep valleys were more like French

The golden statue of Augustus the Strong
 - Wikimedia photo by Pudelek

hill towns than German, not so prim and tidy as most villages in the flatlands but very picturesque. We followed the road to the south of the Elbe back to Dresden and got stuck in a queue from the top of the hill above Pirma all the way through the bends down into the town centre which took over an hour. An ambulance had gone past us with its lights flashing, but there were no obvious signs of what had caused the holdup. The centre of Dresden was a mix of very modern buildings on wide boulevards and reconstructed ancient buildings (the Allies bombed Dresden the night of the 13th/14th Feb ‘45 and didn’t leave many stones standing) which were on the left as we crossed the river bridge. The road swung to the left and we passed the beautiful golden statue of Augustus the strong, on horseback, 17c Elector and builder of the famous Zwinger palace - now a museum.

View of Dresden on the Elbe river - Wikimedia photo (no author listed)

Out through the suburbs and back on to the motorway heading north. Paused for a break at the first rest area. A Czech coach load of teenagers were running around, three girls supported a fourth who looked decidedly ill. We arrived home at 9.30 p.m. after finding the route off the 96a through Falkenhorst back to Schmöckwitz.