Bogs and Boulders
Schremser Hochmoor and Blockheide Nature Parks
The Oldies have chosen a lovely quiet campsite, just outside the village of Waldenstein in the Waldviertel. The campsite is small but it certainly comes with lots of additional extras. I’ve already experienced a few campsites with interesting extras before, such as the one in Makó, Hungary, that came with its very own chapel. But this one beats them all. Not only is there a Gasthaus with great food on site, it also comes with its own swimming pond and a Gradieranlage, a ‘graduation house’ spa. This is basically a building with interior walls made of large cages containing all kinds of branches over which salt water constantly runs, creating an atmosphere similar to sea air. Heavenly for me! I sit there, close my eyes and am immediately transported back to the Atlantic.
Her Ladyship was thrilled with that too, but I suspect she was even more thrilled to discover yet another additional extra: the local boy band! Die jungen Waldensteiner are prominently advertised in the campsite and I’ve already caught her checking out their latest videos online. I reckon it’s going to take a good few more sessions in the graduation house to calm Herself down after watching those!
Thankfully, His Lordship managed to drag Her star-struck Ladyship away from the excitement of Waldenstein and headed for the peaceful environment of the Schrems Hochmoor (raised bog) Nature Park. I am used to Irish bogs, of course, so it was highly interesting to visit an Austrian one.
There are some lovely walking routes through the bog and we had great views from the top of the 20 metre high Himmelsleiter, ‘stairway to heaven’. Back down on not-so-solid ground, the bog cotton and peaty brown pools definitely reminded me of Ireland, although I suspect that there must have been plenty of very Austrian snakes lurking in there too!
Apparently, turf was still harvested by hand here up to the 1980s. Nowadays, there are efforts to conserve and reinstate the bog. I hadn’t realised that peat lands absorb harmful carbon dioxide which is helpful in combating climate change so conservation is well worthwhile. I was also rather shocked to learn that the peat layer grows at the rate of a mere 1 millimetre per annum. My goodness, you humans really ought to be a bit more careful with this planet!
The Oldies were fascinated by the Visitors Centre which was a mine of information on the bog and its flora and fauna. They also seemed delighted to have the opportunity to watch an otter being fed. For me, it was pure torture. You should have seen all the fish and other goodies that lucky beast was treated to while I could just stand there, drooling on the sidelines. And while we’re on the subject of lucky beasts – later on in the restaurant, I also had to witness His Lordship tucking into a couple of catfish sausages for his lunch. That rotter didn’t even leave me a morsel. Now, that was a bit hard to swallow!
It’s difficult to imagine now, but the Waldviertel was once home to a mountain range that was higher than the Himalayas. Massive granite boulders are all that now remains of those ancient mountains. About 320 million years old, these boulders have been eroded over the millennia and have literally rolled up in all kinds of formations and combinations. And in all kinds of places.
I’ve seen plenty of garden gnomes in my time. In the Waldviertel, no garden is complete without its own granite boulder. Some are even decorated in the most imaginative way…
Many of the most fascinating examples of these boulders are dotted around the Blockheide, a beautiful nature park in Gmünd-Eibenstein. Some are scarily reminiscent of all kinds of creatures: goblins, elephants, a shark… Your imagination could run away with you here!
I enjoyed the panoramic views from the observation tower, and the museum on the ground floor offered plenty of hard facts about the boulders. Apparently, granite was only quarried in the Gmünd area from the late 19th century. Beforehand, the granite was simply taken from where the boulders lay. One of the largest boulders yielded over 2,400 cubic metres of granite alone, half of which was used to build a bridge in Vienna.
Fun fact: the 15th Meridian east, Central European Time, runs directly through the Blockheide. It was good to be on time for once!
I was gobsmacked, or rather beaksmacked, by the Wackelsteine, so-called wobble stones. Incredibly, these enormous monsters are so precariously positioned that they can actually be rocked back and forth. No wonder the Featherless Fossils felt so at home here. Like the Wackelsteine, they too are steinalt und wackelig – ancient and wobbly.
The only thing wobbling here was … well, not that boulder anyway.
There’s no doubt about it. The Waldviertel rocks!
