Well, we had planned to walk up Rauschberg today but the weather wasn't particularly good and the forecast for the day didn't look promising.
Instead, we decided to venture out and walk the long way round to the Glockenschmiede (the Cow Bell forge - where I had hoped to buy a cow bell).
We started the walk by walking up past St George's Church and then following a path to Brand - within a mile we had lost the signpost for Brand and we ended up doubling back on ourselves, essentially walking a 2 mile circuit!
We looked at the map again and eventually found the path we needed and started again, climbing up a main road until we found the way marker for Hochfellan (1674m/5492ft) which we need to follow for part of the way. According to the map there were some minor/unmarked paths that we should have been able to follow to get us to the forge but we couldn't find them (despite three failed attempts and a fair amount of climbing and then descending).
The path was through forestry which gave us some shelter from the rain but afforded very little in the way of views. We retraced our steps back to the way-marked route, given that we had no other option but to go the long way round and we continued to undulate on the forest track before eventually coming out at the forge.
Stepping into the forge was stepping back in time - from the outside it looks like a simple alpine house but in the inside it is full of old tools (the smithy also produced a large number of tools such as straw knives, scythes, sickles, axes, logging tools, bark cutters and turf knives - many of which were on display). Inside there were three ovens and three mini waterwheels which powered a hammer-like tool.
We watched a film (in German) which showed the forge working in 1955 and we later learned that the forge is referenced by the Ruhpolding Parish as far back as the 17th century. The workshop and it's two water wheels are listed and the water wheels looked very delicate.
The wee shop (nothing more than a shed) offered a fair variety of cow bells for sale and we treated ourselves to one before heading back onto the path for Rhupolding. As we had been walking for a fair number of hours and hadn't eaten lunch we headed straight to the Shubeck for cake and coffee! Worth saying that we did a fair amount of climbing and I certainly feel that we climbed the equivalent distance of Rauschberg - we reckon we climbed in excess of 1293m/4242ft).
Walk: 13.5miles/5.5 hours
