castles, caves and dangerous climbing

Yesterday some friends (that is Eva, Helene, Tom, Daniel, Magdalena) and I went on an adventure in Southern Styria! We took the train to Wildon, where we wanted to visit a castle from the 13th century that is now a ruin. After we had got off the train and walked a few hundred meters, we met a friend of Eva's by chance. He told us the best way to get to the ruin, which is on top of a hill.

the open-air stage

First we walked through the centre of Wildon with all its old buildings and wonderfully conserved facades. We even took a look inside the church. Then we followed a path uphill that led us to Wildon's open-air stage. However, after the stage, the path seemed to end and we did not know where to go. Eva called her friend to ask for directions again and according to him there should have been a visible path, but we couldn't make out anything as the ground of the forest was covered in leaves.

The ruins of the castle were directly above us, so eventually we decided to just head for them as best we could - that was when our relaxing hike turned into a rather exhausting and potentially dangerous climb! We were all very relieved when we finally reached the top of the hill. The ruins are scattered over the whole hill top, some of them almost perfectly conserved, others only pieces of stone walls.

Later we realized that there would actually have been a path leading to the ruins - we had simply come from the wrong side of the hill! Climbing instead of taking the path had been more fun, but we did not want to risk injuries on our way back down, so this time we took the safe path. On our way down we looked out for a cave called "Wilde-Mann-Höhle". We knew that is was supposed to be south of the castle and also what the entrance looked like because we had seen a video. It was impossible to find, however, and when we asked a jogger for directions he believed it had to be somewhere near the path we had taken before. By then we were all tired and hungry, so we gave up the search at this point and made our way back to the centre of Wildon.

When we left the path we noticed a sign that made us all laugh: "Access to site of the ruins prohibited - danger of collapse!" How good that we had come climbing from the opposite direction... :-)