There is drama to the arrival in Saxon Switzerland. We catch a train in Dresden as the rain begins to fall, droplets racing along the carriage windows as we pass through the suburbs of the city until we meet the Elbe and make our way south into the hills. Anyone who has taken the train from Berlin to Prague will know that this is the most spectacular stretch of the journey. After Pirna, the forest pushes up against the riverbank, with dramatic sandstone rock formations rising out above the canopy.
It is a beautiful but sometimes strange and unsettling place, Saxon Switzerland. Poets and painters travelled here in the early 19th century in search of a “Germany” that existed as an idea but was not yet to be found on any map. In East German times it was part of the Tal der Ahnungslosen or the ‘Valley of Clueless’… the corners of the country where it was nearly impossible to access West German television or radio. In more recent times it has been a place where far-right politics have found support among a substantial minority of the population.
From Bad Schandau station you take a ferry to reach the town itself. The rain has stopped now, but the skies are grey and moody. The ferry captain is friendly in a way that always feels surprising when you travel out from Berlin to the rest of the country. Our fellow passengers are almost all hikers and bikers, here to make the best of a summer weekend when the weather forecast seems to be locked in on drizzle.
It doesn’t matter. In Saxon Switzerland the trails that criss-cross the national park spend quite a lot of their time beneath the forest canopy. And when you reach the hard-earned lookout points atop the rock formations, the view is such to capture the imagination of any would-be Romantic wordsmith.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge spent plenty of time walking in Germany during his time in Göttingen, and although most of his adventures were in the Harz mountains, there is something about Saxon Switzerland and its fog-swallowed forests, bright-green ferns and moss covered rocks that makes you think of him haunting these trails as you go.
Heavy masses of shapeless vapour upon the mountains…
On this July day, as we clamber up to look out across the rocks and the forest and the river, upstream to the invisible border with Czechia or down to where the spires and domes of Dresden are just out of sight beyond the grey horizon, it is easy to imagine that Coleridge’s Borrowdale could be swapped for the Kirnitzschtal, the Lakeland fells for the Schrammsteine.
For two days we walk through and between the showers. From the Lake District we journey in memory to the forests of Japan, where we explored the birthplace of shinrin-yoku (forest bathing) with a ranger who walked the trails carrying an umbrella and explained how the phytoncides released by the trees linger longer after rainfall, boosting your immune system among other benefits.
Is that why we return to our hotel, tucked away in the bottom of a steep valley, the trees looming on from all sides, with a particular sense of well-being despite the weather? Perhaps. Or perhaps it is just simply having days where the only thing you have to do is put one foot in front of the other until you’ve walked enough, seen enough and made it back to where you began in time for a beer.
On our last morning, we debate whether we should go for one last walk in the woods. The forecast is for yet more rain.
‘It’s not cold,’ the woman working the breakfast shift tells us, as we look out across the terrace where light rain has coated each of the wooden tables in a thin layer of water. ‘And once you are among the trees, the forest will protect you.’
Thanks for reading,
Paul & Katrin
Bad Schandau, July 2026
New on The Winding Trail:
“Shikoku is the smallest of the main Japanese islands, the least visited by tourists, and the valleys of the island interior feel even more isolated still. The Iya valley’s historical inaccessibility has long made it a hideaway for defeated warriors looking for a place to disappear. Even the vine bridges that draw the few visitors that come to take a look are said to have been constructed so that they can be cut down quickly should anyone come looking who wasn’t supposed to be there…”
Island of the imagination – Travels in Shikoku
More from Saxon Switzerland:
“Whether you take on the full 116-km, eight stage challenge of completing the Malerweg in one go or decide to split it up into more manageable chunks, there is little question that this trail, tucked away in the sandstone mountains along the Elbe river close to the Czech border, is one of Germany’s most beautiful hiking routes. You’ll be following tracks through the forest between picturesque villages and towering rock formations, with the river itself a constant (although not always visible) companion…”
On the trail – the Malerweg, Saxon Switzerland
From the archive:
“The next day we explore another corner of the Kiso Valley, exploring the Akasawa Natural Recreational Forest with Nick and Tanaka-san, a volunteer forest ranger who tells us the history of what is one of Japan’s three forests of outstanding beauty. Akasawa, where the forest grows on steep hillsides above a fast-flowing river, is a place of 300-year-old Kiso cypress trees and where shinrin-yoku or forest-bathing therapy was first developed in the 1980s…”
