Bucolic Bayreuth

 Just got back from a two-and-a-half hour walk in the forest and surrounding villages here in Bayreuth. After an overcast morning and early afternoon the weather turned gorgeous around 4pm, so I got shod and headed off. I had no real game plan, deciding instead to go where my feet took me. My priority was to compose a nasty letter to a concert promoter who had ripped off a colleague of mine just the other week, so the only thing I needed was enough distance in front of me to find the right turn of phrase and not invoke a law suit.

Before I set off I took a couple of pictures of the view from my bedroom window:

…just in case anyone was wondering why I like it so much, here. And here's one of the little lane where I live:

I wandered through the forest just behind the house for about an hour, eventually coming out on a country road which led to a horse club. Some of the denizens were out in the field:

So I wandered on, passing through a village called Cottenbach where I got into conversation with a lady standing at her gate. Not much can happen in that village as she seemed reluctant to let me go. There was a wonderful group of renovated farm buildings which a number of families appeared to have bought up and renovated in the style of the period it was built. A large part of the garden was an enormous playground for the children with slides, paddling pools, wendy houses and tree houses, swings and sand pits. It looked wonderful. Centrepiece of the ensemble was a large dovecote which also featured on the sign they'd painted, announcing their Bauernhof. It looked like a little piece of paradise. Add the weather to that and you don't get much closer to nirvana without breaking the law.

After about mile I reached the outskirts of Bayreuth and was greeted by Gasthaus Kolb, an institution among the public houses and inns of the town. Armed with my book I decided to sit down for a few minutes for a well-earned libation:

That's a glass of dunkles Hefeweizen, in case you were wondering, and is the closest you'll get to nirvana etc etc.

Back at the house I found an e-mail from Mrs. Fingers, informing me we're going to have to get the council to defumigate the communal areas of our building as the loony woman's cats, rabbits, dogs and birds have basically turned our living space into a seething agar plate of potential disease. And that on the day that newly-elected Emperor Flanby of France appears to have got the absolute majority he needs to turn the country into the socialist pigsty he and his Parisian intelligentsia, aided and abetted by the press, want to inflict on the people. There's fun in store, I tell yer…

Pity I just had that one beer.