The Warche valley around Reinhardstein again

The children aren't always motivated to go on walks with me, but I'm still the adult, so I have the advantage to make the decision for them.  I want them to be outside for part of the day for sure, if not there is too much discussion about the allowed screen time etc.  They know that.  

But we've come at the point that it works well telling them "this afternoon we'll go on a walk all together, you get to choose where we go, as long as we go, I don't care".  We've spent here sufficient time for them to know multiple options. They do tend to choose almost always the same, but have added some variety. 

It's also fun to see how they name or describe the walks they choose "the giant walk" (because there was a giant mushroom according to Kabouter on this walk probably about 5 yeas ago) , "there at the little bridge first "  "The one where we get to play in the water at the beginning, with the barrier"  "the one with the plane wreck".   At the end of May they choose the "not so long but steep one near the castle".  I knew what they intended, so off we went to the Robertville dam. 

Unfortunately, the dam is closed off for road works. It was already ongoing when we came here in March just recently, but then traffic could still cross. Not this time, so I either had to turn around and make a very big detour around the Robertville lake,  or I drove up to Ovifat and descended to the parking lots for the Reinhardstein castle.  Since we know the walks so well, we could just start at the last km and then walk to the start and continue our loop.  

So first we descended to the castle and then picked up on the signs of the walk, in the direction of the power dam.  Since there was no signs whatsoever, it was my assumption that pedestrians still could cross allright....Euhm, not really so. We arrived at the big construction site with only a passage way back to the road to Robertville village.  However many other walkers and cyclers had opened up the barriers a bit and so we joined them all to cross the site and the dam probably illegally to the other side of the valley.   I guess that was only possible because it was a holiday with no construction crew in sight. 

OK now we were a the correct starting point of the walk (after already almost 2 kms of walking) and obviously there it was posted that there was a shortcut in the woods for all of these walks because the dam was unavailable.  Well dugh, it could have been handy to have some signs on the other side of the valley. Surely I'm not the only one who dares to start a looped walk at an alternative point. 

We climbed the steep hills on the edge of the Warche valley in the direction of the Nez de Napéleon, a famous rock/viewpoint. 

Somehow we missed the rock of Nez de Napoléon entirely.  The vista's across the valley were gorgeous as always. 

I've become one of those walkers that is quite frustrated by the many mountainbikers riding whatever trail and wrecking it.  Aaaah the life of a small crowded country where we all dispute each other's scarce space. 

Once the steep descend to the valley bottom completed, we played a bit at the confluence of the Warche river and the Baheyon river.  This time no children fell wet into the water . 

After following the impressive rocks and meanders of the Warche , we courageously started the steep climb up (17% according to a sign).  After a short but heavy climb, we enjoyed the views on the castle on the other side of the valley edge and the many many blooming broom turning the rocky wall into a yellow slope. 

From the castle we left the trail back up to the parking lot near Ovifat.