Visit to lovely Goslar and the Rammelsberg Mining Museum

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Kisbee all excited again today as he came out of the garage. All fired up and ready to go for a ride.

Actually the ride was short, only a couple of miles along the road into Goslar.

What a wonderful place to visit. Designated Unesco World Heritage in 1992 all the streets are still lined with perfectly preserved timbered buildinsg. There are some real beauties among them. Wonderful carvings, painted decoration, some tiled all over in ornate slate patterns. We saw nothing out of place. No modern billboard to spoil the look, just an entire town of near perfect historic buildings.

The town has a wealthy heritage dating back to the 10^th century because of the mineral mines on the edge of town at Rammerlsberg where silver, lead, zinc and copper were mined in abundance.

We scooterd in over the cobbled streets and parked by the main church. Handy being on a scooter as we can park pretty well where we want whereas all the car owners had to park their cars in the official car parks on the edge of town.

We walked down to the Market Square and just admired the beauty of it all. Lots of others were doing the same but it was a lovely sunny day and everyone was happy as we were.

We stopped for coffee in the square then strolled the streets and visited the Catholic Church and the Market Church. Popped into the Rathaus which has the most amazingly fresco decorated Hall of Homage. This is now closed to the public to preserve it but a smaller replica has been created so we sat in that and watched a video about its history.

Found a rather good snack shop for lunch and had vegan avacado and salsa wraps. Perfect.

Back to the scooter after a lovely wander in the sunshine with plenty of street music to entertain us on the way.

Then off we went on Kisbee to the Rammelsberg Mining Museum, also designated a Unesco World Heritage site. We opted for the underground train tour (nice lady in the office classed us as “Students studying mining” so we got a discount).

We donned hard hats and then met our guide who spoke only German. We were the only non German speakers so we didn’t understand 99% of what he said but we got the general idea of things as the tour progressed because there were plenty of visual aids.

We set off from the main yard of the mine by climbing into the little carriages of the yellow miner’s transport train. No lights or wndows and we had to crouch as it really was little and off we went into a gap in the building and then down the rails of the mine.

This dark trip took 5 minutes and we then all climbed out and walked along the very damp passageways of the mine. Our guide jabbered on and was obviously quite amusing as he described the various processes of drilling and dynamiting using displays set up along the way as we walked. Never been down a mine before so exceedingly interesting. Cannot imagine anyone working down there for hour after hour every day.Dark, cold, damp and very noisy as well as potential dangerous.

We retuned to our little train and emerged blinking into the sunshine. Hard hats handed in we grabbed icecreams from the café then had a stroll round the yard and in some of the museum buildings. The mineral separation machinery was especially interesting but also perplexing as we had no idea how it all worked and all displays were in German only.

Absolutely well worth the visit even without understanding much of what was said.

Back to the campsite on Kisbee and warm enough to eat outside then take a stoll up the hill behind the campsite to enjoy the tranquillity and birdsong and bonus, not dark until 10pm. I can’t believe we are only 11 days away from the longest day. I’ll be saying soon, in jest, that the nights are drawing in.
I decided to use my collapsible walking stick as my knee has suddenly (since I became one year old last Sunday) to refuse to support me when it is even the slightest bit bent. Steps and the tiniest of slopes are a problem. As we are to visiti a castle later which requires walking up a hill to get there I am now practicing with my stick as I'm not missing that castle.

Moving on tomorrow but not far, to Werningerode

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