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Summer Highlight Reel - Blog Posts
Summer highlight reel: Île de la Table Ronde
To the South of Lyon, the "Island of the Round Table" in the middle of the Rhône offers a fantastic escape from the city. While the East side is exposed to a lot of noise from motorway traffic, the inside and West shore are gorgeous, and the southernmost end is a nature preserve.
The river flows by at a steady pace, making it a good spot for a reaction ferry similar to the ones in Basel. Fair play to the locals, they thought that too!
Bridges now do the job - though the suspension bridge from Vernaison isn't doing too well. Built in 1959, it needs replacing and until then, traffic is limited on it so as not to overload it. This hasn't been helped by the North side of the island being an industrial estate.
In the centre of the island, one finds a ruined farm, the Ferme aux Loups. One thing @teamroquette likes to do is geocaching, and so we looked for some, but the most elusive geocache of all was the namesake of the island. There are pictures of a round table associated with the island on Google Maps, but we missed it. That said, one Google review also mentions that they couldn't find it, so who knows.
We did find these interesting and somewhat imposing water level meters though. Lay on them to measure yourself... and get the wrong answer!
Summer highlight reel: Oberkirch
I praised this hike on a loop South of Oberkirch for its amenities, but the views were also fantastic. In chronological order, here's the first vineyard I came across on the circuit.
The first drinks hut, with schnaps, is the Köbelesberghof to the left, out of frame. The hamlet opposite, which OpenStreetMap names In der Rot, looks gorgeous among the vineyards and forest!
Just below the summit area of the Geigerskopf is the Busseck Hof vineyard, and beyond, the plains in which the Rhine flows.
Turn around at the previous photo and the path to the Geigerskopf summit will appear. A tower at the top offers some stunning, unimpeded panoramas of the Rhine plains and the Vosges on one side (Strasbourg is visible in this picture), and the Black Forest hills on the other.
Finally, climbing down, past Busseck and past the drinks hut I stopped at (Klingelberger Hütte), we reach this viewpoint overseeing the town, with the castle visible on the hills opposite. It seems that all the fruits are grown here: apples, plums, pears and grapes...