DAY 49-51: THE BLACK FOREST, GERMANY

CUCKOO clocks, cake, Rhine rieslings, storybook villages and a gazillion spruce trees ... The Black Forest is the natural choice for tourists seeking a taste of traditional German life with lashings of pizzaz.

And the best, quickest and easiest way to see the diverse communities that lie up hill and over dale in this south-west area of Germany is by car. 

So we ditched the train in Basel, in the very south of the region on the Swiss side, and picked up our hire car for three days.

You'll never see as much of the area as you would like in three days but it's a good start. And trust me, while the autobahn can be fun and the fastest from point A to B, the slow-and-easy "backroads" will allow you to savour this experience more and to stop wherever you fancy.

We stayed in three very different locations: Freiburg im Breisgau (or more commonly known as Freiburg) right opposite the 11th century Munster (cathedral) in Hotel Oberkirch on Munsteplatz in Old Town; at Hotel Rebenhof, right in the middle of the vineyards of Neuweier near the spa town of Baden-Baden in the north; and possibly the most picturesque of the Black Forest villages (and that's saying something!) at Schiltach's Zur Alten Brucke a little further south-west.

Freiburg is the unofficial capital of the Black Forest and its other claim to fame is that it reportedly gets more sun than any other German city.

Its cobblestoned Old Town squares, market stalls and narrow alleyways contrast with the designer-wear boutiques and department stores in and around the main city streets.

We escaped the hustle and bustle for a while and headed up to forested Schlossberg (park on a 456m hill) with its lookouts, leafy walks and beer garden complete with city panorama.

If in Freiburg, the old city gates and the Munster also are worth a look and you must do what the locals do and eat traditional fare at one of a myriad al-freso cafes and wurst vans.

In Neuweier, we somehow managed to score "the penthouse" in Hotel Rebenhof. So no matter whether we were having wine and nibbles on our balcony with a 360-degree view, falling asleep while gazing out the panorama windows, or having dinner or breakfast on the restaurant terrace, we were always surrounded by those majestic hillsides bursting with healthy green grapevines.

Schiltach is the village I always imagined I would find in the Black Forest with its colourful and quirky buildings, promenades along a stream running through the town, and a cobblestoned Old Town that leads you up and down alleyways with hardly a soul around on a Sunday afternoon.

The B317 (near Frieberg) and B500 (especially the northern stretch of the elevated Schwarzwald Hochstrasse near Baden-Baden) are world-renowned motoring routes in the region that will serve up all the epic scenery, forestry and mountain drives you could ever want.

Use them in conjunction with other main and not-so-major roads (such as the B33) to criss-cross the region and meander through villages on lakes, in valleys and on mountain tops. In about 600km over three days, we discovered these gems:

* One of our favourite stops was the world-renowned health resort and cuckoo clock capital of Triberg (home of the world's biggest cuckoo clock at Uhren Park), where we joined the throngs on a Saturday afternoon to walk the steep path to Germany's highest waterfalls. 

The waters of the Gutach plunge to the valley 160m below in seven cascades that can be viewed at various vantage points up the path and over bridges. The spectacle would be particularly exciting at Christmas with snow all around and the falls illuminated by 750,000 lights.

Originally the Black Forest was covered in forests but over a period of hundreds of years, much of the area's better sites were cleared for farming and the wood cultivated. But because of the extreme site conditions of the Triberg Falls/Gutach area, it remains more natural and diverse including Obervogt-Huber Pine (spruce), beech, pine, sycamore, ash and elm trees.

* We ate our first Black Forest black forest cake for Sunday brunch (as you do) at Seebrugg with an engrossing view of Titisee Lake from the Hubertus Hotel terrace.

* Mummelsee around lunchtime on Sundays attracts marketgoers, souvenir hunters, drinkers and diners, motorbike riders, families on the lake, and hikers. 

We fell into the latter category, taking the 45-minute hike along a forestry track on Hornisgrinde (1164m above sea level, the highest in the Northern Black Forest) before climbing up the bitumen road to the lookout tower (Hornisgrindeturm) and around the circuit as far as the Bismarck Turm (a memorial tower to those who lost their lives in the Second World War with the sinking of the Bismarck).

At the halfway point of our 101 nights in Europe, these have been our favourite three days and the Black Forest has won our hearts as the best region so far.

Lesson of the day: Every day is busy on these picturesque and winding roads but just be aware of the crazy kamikaze motorcyclists and Sunday drivers especially.