About 5-10 minutes from where we live, there is a region called “Siebenmühlental”. Roughly translated, it is the valley of the seven mills, hence the title (which reminds me of Seven Hills in Sydney).

Over the past two weekends we have been visiting a few of the mills in this valley, which coincidentally has 11 mills and not 7.

The first mill that we visited was called “Eselsmühle” or Donkey Mill. Very fitting seeing as they have a few donkeys on the property that you can pet. Of the three mills that I’ve seen so far, this is my favourite one and probably in the best condition. It’s also the only one with a working mill where they grind grain and make their own bread. Here, you can have a look at the giant watermill, shop bio-products and eat in the restaurant with a lovely terrace.

Last weekend we visited another mill but there was a lot less going on. We went to Seebrückenmühle (Sea bridge mill) and they had a restaurant and biergarten, which was apparently closing last weekend because the owners are moving (back) to Tirol in Austria.

Schlechtsmühle

I’ve mentioned this before, but Germans love to ‘wander’. They just drive somewhere or better, start walking from home and walk through forests, climb mountains, etc etc for fun. Siebenmühlental is a great place for wanderers. You can walk from mill to mill, or just walk around in the forests in the area. We decided to do a mini-wander-walk to the next mill to see if it was more exciting. It was about 1.2km and we got to Schlechtsmühle (literally, like bad mill) and saw a sign saying that there was no entry. Great. This mill is not for visitors and there is no restaurant or anything. They focus their work on agriculture and not hospitality. Still, we took some pictures because it looked so idyllic apart from the planes flying overhead every 5 minutes or so.

We figured that the next mill wouldn’t be so far away and walked for about another kilometer but could not see anything in the area, so we headed back. Perhaps I’ll post about some of the other mills in the future.

Anyway, if you’re into wandering like the Germans, this is as good a place as any because you can dine at various mills along the way.