Saturday, 31 May 2025

hohenwartetalsperre iv (12. 500)

We took a short drive to look at the Hohenwarte dam wall (Staumauer, see previously) and took a nice long walk with the dogs down a trail through an enchanted forest (there were a lot activities set up for kids hidden amongst the trees, like our own Zwergweg) and across the basis by a former cardboard factory. We could see the Pumpspecicherwerk (pumped hydroelectric energy storage plant in the far distance, a gravitational sink that is a source of potential energy, channelling water uphill to a higher holding basis during off-peak hours and releasing it during higher periods of demand to generate electricity in the turbines.
Such a plant also allows excess energy from intermittent sources—like solar and wind—to be saved. The lake and surrounding area were full of recreational opportunities, more wandering and cruises over the length and breath of reservoir.

Thursday, 29 May 2025

hohenwartetalsperre ii (12. 496)

While we’ve undoubtedly both been off for Ascension Day (Christi Himmelfahrt, forty days after Easter) and knew about the conflation and coopting of the public holiday as Vatertag, Herrentag or Mรคnnertag to disassociate it from religious overtones especially in atheist East Germany with a emphasis on partying and taking a nice long hike with a wagon-load of beer (without the family members in tow), we had never really witnessed the celebrations en mass.


We wanted to go wandering along a narrow footpath above the shoreline to the next village of Linkenmรผhle, hosting a guesthouse and the only ferry in the state of Thuringia, which we made but the going was a bit uncomfortable with the added traffic of the holiday and inebriated men pulling carts. The gastronomy was very crowded but we enjoyed ourselves and decided to take the highroad back via a logging path over the mountain.
It was a steep climb and with a field blackberry (Brombeer) brambles that we needed to carry the dogs over due to the thorns of but worth it for the views and very much to ourselves. We came to an establishment called Ziegenhof—a working goat farm—with caprine-based refreshments, including goat-milk ice cream and a variety of cheeses—on the way back down to the campsite.
Through the night, several party barges were launched—we could hear the music as they passed, familiar Schlager song mostly but a few new to me, like this rendition Wir haben Grund zum Feiern (We have a Reason to Party to the tune of “We Didn’t Start the Fire”—see also) from the dock for a tour of the reservoir.

synchronoptica

one year ago: laundry lessons from Japan (with synchronoptica), assorted links worth the revisit plus a post-war postscript from Thomas Mann

seven years ago: Native Americans granted citizenship 

ten years ago: the founding of Leipzig, more links to enjoy plus acceptable facial hair for Norwegian sailors

twelve years ago: furloughing federal workers  

thirteen years ago: Germans and joy plus counterfeit wine

Saturday, 11 January 2025

hohe schule (12. 166)

Taking advantage of a brief period of sunshine, H and I took the dog on a hike up to the summit of the Hohe Schule—previously, the tallest plateau in the eastern foothills of the Rhรถn mountain range, to inspect more of the recently restored Wanderweg. 

 Formerly known as the Aalhauck—“eel hill,” now called “high school” for unknown reasons—German toponymy can be deceiving, as with Schweinfurt, not where the pigs can ford the river. 

The flat top hosts the ruins of a fortification from the Hallstatt period, presumably built to monitor trade through the Ellenbach valley and reoccupied in the Middle Ages with a newer rampart and collapsed walls, hardly recognisable and reclaimed by the forest but fenced in as several Bronze Age artefacts were discovered there during an emergency survey conducted in the 1980s, including prehistoric millstones, primitive glass vials and a brooch, but further excavations are still pending and archeologists want to preserve the site, and affords some spectacular views on the valley and village below and mountain peaks beyond.

Tuesday, 2 July 2024

maccagno superiore (11. 659)

Slowly scaling the mountain rising behind our lakefront campsite, we were afford some amazing views and walked the path around Lago Delio, a reservoir first constructed in 1911 and dammed in the 1960s for hydroelectric power. 




The trail was nice but one could not get too close to the water and continued upwards to the top of Monte Cadrigna and the alpine pass at Forcora. 






It would be an equivocation to say we had climbed the mountain but did trek the last fee hundred metres along the gondola stanchions to the summit for a really breathtaking look at Lago Maggiore’s expanse from two sides.


synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronoptica) plus a miscellany of Americana

eight years ago: a cancelled vacation

nine years ago: artist Peter Max, fantasy politics plus bans on yoga

ten years ago: diplomatic blackmail 

eleven years ago: check-out line etiquette plus dragnet surveillance

Saturday, 29 June 2024

il rocco di caldรจ (11.655)

Visiting the comune of between Luino and Laveno Castleveccana and took a hike through the frazione of Caldรจ to the Rocco, a promontory that first hosted a defensive castello in the early tenth century but was breached during the campaigns of Otto I against Berengar II






We first passed the line processing furnaces in a rather venerable industrial park, in operation from 1280 to 1970 these kilns made quicklime for mortar, pottery and plaster and for use in agriculture by superheating limestone, the techniques superannuated by the rise of cheap petroleum. The design of the furnaces and technique were virtually unchanged since the Middle Ages. 




We next came to the a sixteenth century church dedicated to Saint Veronica that was originally a chapel and shelter for farm workers and shepherds in service of a second fortification built on the Rocco, destroyed by the Swiss in 1513 during rivalries between the French and the Holy Roman Empire and allies, the sanctuary being the only part not in complete ruins and overtaken by nature.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Dancing in the Streets (with synchronoptica), an animatronic facelift, We Didn’t Start the Fire updated plus US supreme court ends affirmative action

seven years ago: the parable of the second arrow, rolling back regulations on pesticide use in the US, Trump goes to Paris plus the US united in quackery

eight years ago: weaponising toxic-masculinity, more on ISOTYPEs plus a Golden Mean pocket scope

nine years ago: a word for relating to pigeons plus assorted links worth revisiting

ten years ago: social engineering, an optical muezzin plus placebos and nocebos

Wednesday, 26 June 2024

carmine superiore (11. 652)

Traveling back to Luina—which inherited market privileges from Maccagno—but not quite the showcase of local food and craft week expected, we returned to Laveno to take a ferry ride to the Piedmontese side on the lake at the port of Intra by Verbania and between the stretch of coast known as the Cannero Riveria—with same Mediterranean flair—and city of Cannobio, we stopped to explore an abandoned village—the lower settlement named inferiore though still populated. 




Though visible from the campground perched midway up the mountain and only about a kilometer away, was quite a journey to get to the well-preserved medieval ghost town, with a hike through the woods and cascades for the final ascent, Carmine Supreiore was originally built as an escape castle and observation post for Carmine below and the harbor of Cannobio, with a commanding view of the lake and Lombard mountains. 







This better-defended retreat saw its significance wane and was depopulated after the First World War, but subsistence farmers and vintners had the foresight to ensure that it did not fall into complete ruin and had a series of caretakers. Dominated by a church from the thirteen hundreds dedicated to St Gotthard, invoked, among other thing, for relief gout and still sees regular pilgrimages from sufferers. Afterwards we went to Cannobio, a pre-Roman city that rebelled against fascism by establishing the independent Republic of Ossola, with its extensive lakefront piazza before heading back the long way around through Switzerland.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica) plus the Pied Piper of Hamlin

seven years ago: low-Earth orbit being crowded out, mobile check-up units, more links to enjoy plus an IBM featurette

eight years ago: a camera carriage frame for car morphing, secessionist groups plus a potential UK constitutional crisis

nine years ago: more links to enjoy

ten years ago: the Wicked-isation of classic fairy-tales

 

Monday, 24 June 2024

maccagno (11. 650)





The former independent Lombard commune now merged with other municipalities along the lake, the town where we are staying. Elevated during the tenth century by Holy Roman Emperor Otto the Great as the immediate fiefdom of the Four Valleys for hospitality demonstrated during the Kaiser’s Italian campaign against his cousin Berengar II as king of Italy with a charter to hold a market and mint coins of the realm.





The town’s importance waned once grain exports were limited and the town had to give up its autonomy to the counts of Borromeo—of insular fame. We travelled up the mountain overlooking the port first from the village of Agra with numerous Belvedere affording a panoramic view of Lago Maggiore after a nice hike through the woods and then from above Maccagno’s old port abutting a cliff face and caverns for exploring.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: resistance fighter Willem Arondรฉus (with synchronoptica), the Wagner mutiny plus the last Western Roman emperor

seven years ago: television cameras banned from White House press conferences, the Queen signals her displeasure, plus fact-checking the Trump campaign

eight years ago: populism in the US and UK, subterranean Singapore plus Greenland leaves the EU (1982)

nine years ago: assorted links to revisit, reconciling ancient philosophy with church doctrine plus a chimeric lamb

ten years ago: the importance of boredom, the vocabulary of migration plus bootstraps and bitcoin