Parklife

Mornings. Heavy like a stone. Slow starts and click click click. The ever present thread to the new now, which I can hardly tell from the old then. Click click click, chemicals and scanning is all that keeps me going. I fool myself with creative no through roads. I long for cake and dancing but my militant disciplinarian stiff upper lip refuses me the free expression. But in the park, I can watch. I‘m a voyeur at the end of the world. Have they seen the fucking news? I have and really I don’t care. If we can turn it off we‘ll live forever. Or at least another day. Or maybe we only have a month of Sundays. I hate Sundays but I’ll take it. One of the fish died. He had been sucked into the filter backwards, left dead with a look of disbelief frozen on his tiny fishy face, eyes bulging in the evening light. His companions seemed oblivious. The wee one put the remains in a jar of water. Hopeful, but pointless.

Zenit E / Asahi Super Takumar 50mm 1.4 / Fomapan 400 / Fujifilm Pro 400 H
Moscow July 2020.

Chrischona – Inzlingen – Riehen

A fairly easy walk you can do on a quiet day in Basel is to take tram 6 out to Bettingerstrasse stop in Riehen and then take  bus 32 (stop is  just round the corner from the tram stop) up the hill to Chrischona. If you walk round to the North side of the hill with the church on it there’s a path through the woods crossing into Germany and over into Inzlingen. It’s very rural and you might even see some highland cows on the way. I recommend coffee and cake in the moated castle before the walk back round the hill to Riehen (there is a rather infrequent bus if you’re feeling lazy). Takes 2 to 3 hours.

Flüh (Switzerland) – Château de Landskron – Leymen (France)

We found a really nice walk today. Take a number 10 tram from Basel to Flüh, and then walk up through Flüh past the Restaurant Sternenberg. It’s quite a steep residential street. When you’re almost at the top of the road there’s a right turn that goes up some more and takes you into some farm land on a high plateau overlooked by a fantastic set of ruins on the top of the hill. You cross over into France to get there. The border is clearly marked. Keep

walking up to the ruins at the top of the hill. Part of the castle is still intact and you can get to the top of the tower which has fantastic views. There is no entry charge. The ruins really are very atmospheric

 

and you’ll want to hang around for a while. When you’ve had enough walk down the other side of the hill through the wood into Leymen. You can catch the number 10 tram back into Switzerland and Basel from there. The walk itself can be done in about an hour and isn’t strenuous. The tram ride is about half an hour and there are plenty of places to eat in Flüh. This is a great way to spend an afternoon and walk from one country to another.