Spring! Romans! Blacknecks!

Temperatures in the low to middle twenties (Celsius that is), sun shining, blue skies... More than enough reasons for us to neglect our usual chores and saddle up our donkeys for a little tour through the Rhine valley! First stop was an old Roman village near the little town of Schuttern that was discovered only in the 1970s when somebody spotted some strange rubble from a train riding by.

The old village was actually only a small collection of houses that was used as a station on the road between Mainz and Basel. Most of the houses were made from wood, but the main building was made of stone. There is also a little temple for the Gaulish Goddess Abnoba who was worshipped in the Black Forest area. The round section on the picture above was the bath. On the pictures below our Vespas are parked on the old (re-constructed) Roman road.

Whenever we are in the area we pay a visit to old Father Rhine, and we did so again this time. In this area the river is split into two streams: the bigger one is used for shipping, the smaller one for power generation. So the river is indeed much broader than it appears on the picture below.

But the discovery of the day was a group of beautiful goats, all of them bi-colored, a brownish black on the front half and white on the back. We googled them as Valais Blacknecks, usually found in Switzerland, and at one time with less than 500 animals almost extinct. We have no idea how they ended up in our area, but we are very glad that we have them here!