Fresh air and country living in Germany’s idyllic Allgäu Alps

This is the perfect place to refresh your heart and soul. There are three benches to sit on, and a wooden cross rising into the blue sky. Ahead, you see an apple orchard. There are rose hips, too, adding a dash of orange to this painterly prospect.

Up here on the Hörnle, a lookout point over the city of Pfronten, the landscape is spread out below for you to enjoy.

Welcome to the Allgäu Alps in Germany’s Bavaria, rich in mountains, forests, pastures and grasslands. In the foreground, there is the St. Nicholas Church, with a tiled roof and a steeple that resembles an inverted gentian flower.

This mountain idyll is not far from the fairytale castle Neuschwanstein and is also close to the Austrian border. When you descend the Hörnle it is just a short distance to the Berger Moos, a protected moorland area on the edge of Pfronten, a special place amid the many natural treasures here.

“Every week the flora changes. You always find something new,” says moorland guide Manuela Vogel as she leads her guests through the moor in the evening twilight.

Broom heather and orchids grow here, stemless gentian, devil’s-bite and purple loosestrife. In the meantime, five beavers have returned to the area. Vogel recalls the time when peat was still cut in the Allgäu, a task that her grandmother Maria had to help out with.

Rural sustainability: The handloom weaver

Manual labour of another kind is cultivated by Hans Hechenberger in his family-run handweaving workshop. For the shop Hechenberger invented and built a pneumatically-supported weaving loom. “But I didn’t patent it,” the 70-year-old says with a laugh. The raw material for the carpets he weaves comes primarily from Allgäu mountain sheep. When Hechenberger started back in the 1980s, he said, wool was “still a waste product from the slaughter” of the sheep and he himself was viewed as somewhat odd. Today, demand for his products is booming.

There’s something else that Hechenberger has noticed. Now, customers are bringing pieces of leftover scraps of fabric – from curtains, aprons, stockings, bed clothing. From these he weaves floor coverings, each one unique. From the old something new is created – a sustainability cycle on a small scale. “Back in the day people didn’t have anything. So they would bring worn-out clothing to the weaver who would make a patchwork carpet of it, just like we do now,” Hechenberger says.

Another artisan is Alexander Endres, who is Pfronten’s only glass-blower. “I have a hot trade,” the 59-year-old says, and he means it literally. His burner develops temperatures of up to 2,500 degrees Celsius.

You can watch him at work in his studio. At the moment an order of miniature glass artworks for children is keeping him busy: “Three cobras, a lizard and a squirrel.”

The call of the mountains

But at some point it is time to get back outdoors again and embrace the natural wonders waiting. In Pfronten, you automatically succumb to the lure of the mountains. The hike up to the Kappeler Alp mountain pasture starts with the Höllschlucht gorge, where a waterfall lies atop a mountain cliff like the tail of a white horse. Hiking over stones and roots and through a mountain forest, you come to the alpine meadows. Butterflies are dancing, there’s a scent of wild mint in the air, and silver thistles are glistening in the sun.

The vistas of the Pfronten Valley, all the way to the massive Zugspitze mountain (Germany’s tallest peak at 2,962 metres) are always inspiring. “The balcony of the Allgäu” is how the operators of the mountain station describe the Kappeler Alp and it is a fitting description.

No less magnificent is the view of the Falkenstein, Germany’s highest-elevation fortress ruins at nearly 1,300 metres above sea level. It was here that Bavaria’s legendary King Ludwig II. (1845-1886) once planned to build his Neuschwanstein fairytale castle, but the project fell through.

For those wishing to conserve their energy while going even higher, there’s the combination of gondola and chairlift to the Breitenberg, Pfronten’s local mountain, which is a popular spot for paragliding enthusiasts. From the top station, it’s only a half-hour climb to the 1,838-meter summit with the Ostlerhütte mountain hut. There you can spend the night comfortably in suites in the style of wooden buildings. When all the visitors have left and the sun sinks behind the distant peaks, the great alpine expanse seems all the more intense.

Bicycling and culinary delights

There are great bicycling opportunities in Ostallgäu, or the eastern part of the mountain range. There’s a fortress and castle route of a good 40 kilometres making a circle that takes in the scenic town of Füssen and the nearby fairy tale castle Neuschwanstein. North of Pfronten is the 25-kilometre Eight Lakes tour which offers many refreshment opportunities along the way.

Not to be missed in all activities is the reward of some hearty food and drink. A mug of beer goes perfectly with Allgäu onion roast and sausage salad. Local star chef Simon Schlachter praises the impressive variety of products from the surrounding area.

What he is not so fond of, ironically, is the cheese dumpling dish called Käsespätzle – a classic of Allgäu cuisine but served nationwide. “I don’t have it on the menu and I also wouldn’t order it for myself,” Schlachter says. It is just not his cup of tea.

By contrast, he raves about Allgäu Krautkrapfen, or sauerkraut fritters, which are not widely known. “A good dough, sauerkraut, bacon, herbs, crème fraîche, the whole thing nicely fried in clarified butter,” Schlachter says. That’s his kind of food, and shows how Pfronten has many diverse ways to satisfy people’s tastes.