2024 Thursday Aug 5

Wildsteig to Buching

After the rain of Wednesday afternoon, Thursday morning was crisp and clean and townspeople were hard at work. Most of our clothes dried overnight and we were ready for a wonderful day.

9:08 am to about 4 pm. 7.98 miles, 21,986 steps, elevation +471. Sprinkles in the evening.

Richard’s Relive video for the day is here: https://www.relive.cc/view/vWqBZdJX7Yq

The dawn view from our hotel window.
Fellow Euro Hike trekkers Margaret and Holger from Hamburg, Germany, were enjoying breakfast when we arrived.
Since we were not able to visit the parish church when we arrived in town, we took time for a brief visit before leaving on today’s hike. Before 9am, a local parishioner had mopped the floor and just asked us to close the doors when we left.
It was smaller, but still a beautiful chapel. The ceiling painting was particularly beautiful.
Outside there were people in the church graveyard tidying after the rain. We were stumped by these boxes in each grave in many different styles.
Mystery revealed. This box did not have a lid and showed the little brush chained to its container to make cleaning the gravestone easy.
This simple parish church also had its own grotto.
Back on the trail and another example of a local chapel.
You can see the size of this chapel by its few pews. Still, it was open and ready for visitors.
This tiny chapel is welcoming to Camino pilgrims, even posting the distance to Santiago.
Now for a completely different church experience at Wies. The Pilgrimagr Church of Wies has been declared a UNESCO world heritage site since December of 1983.
This church is much bigger and grandiose. Bus loads of people were visiting when we were there. Of course, there were lots of restaurant opportunities and souvenir stands.
After the church, the path takes off to the forest passing first through mushy fields. They call it the moors—are we in England?

We had to catch a bus to our evening lodging but had a bit of time to investigate Steingaden. Lumber milling is obviously important here. The video is taken from across the street so ignore the traffic momentarily blocking the view.

Here is a just a amall example of the lumber piled nearby.

The bus was uneventful. We could see hang gliders from our hotel balcony but settled for a quiet evening. Tomorrow is our last walking day on the King Ludwig Way.

2 Responses

  1. After your previous posting I was very happy to read this one. A lot less concerns compared to the last trail you reported on. You deserve this somewhat easier day. Really impressed again with the churches you have seen. Amazing these small towns have had the resources to maintain them. Appreciate Richard’s videos as they give us such insight into what each daily adventure is like, both the difficulty of the walks, what your surroundings are like and the weather. Wendy and I really are enjoying being on this adventure with you.