Once around
the lake

The path around the Schliersee is 7.4 km (4.6 miles) long and has practically no gradient. It stays by the water almost all the way, which makes it the easiest way to get to know the lake. At a brisk pace you are back in a little over an hour and a half. If you stop, take photographs and have lunch, allow half a day.

The lake is a manageable size: 2.22 square kilometres, two and a half kilometres long and a little over one kilometre wide. That means you can almost always see the opposite shore from the path. You never lose your bearings, you always know how far there is still to go, and you can turn back at any point without missing anything.

That is the difference from the larger lakes further west. Walking right round the Tegernsee is a full day’s project. Here it is what you do on your first morning, before you decide what else to do with the week.

Choosing a direction is not a matter of taste but of light. The village sits on the north-east shore. Set off clockwise in the morning, south along the east shore first, and you have the sun behind you all morning, with the mountains lit in front of you as you come back along the west shore.

If you start in the afternoon, reverse it. Walk south along the west shore first, and on the way back along the east shore you have the late light on the mountains. If you are taking photographs, that is the better choice.

Fischhausen, on the south shore, is about two and a half kilometres from the village centre, roughly halfway round. It is the natural place for a break, whichever way you are going.

On the north-west shore the Breitenbach stream flows in, the only inflow of any size. On the north shore, just north of the Freudenberg peninsula, the Schlierach flows out: the lake’s only outlet, which runs thirteen kilometres to the Mangfall river. Both are inconspicuous spots you would walk past without noticing. Once you know, you see the lake differently.

The lake path has an advantage few lakes offer: you can stop whenever you like. From May to September the Schliersee Schifffahrt runs daily. The round trip takes forty-five minutes, with departures between 11 am and 5 pm. If you have had enough halfway, take the boat back.

With children this is the most relaxed way to do it: there on foot, back across the water. It is also the answer to a change in the weather, which comes in faster here than it looks from below.

The whole path is firm enough for a pushchair. A few stretches are compacted gravel rather than tarmac, which you notice through the wheels, but it holds no one up.

Most of what is on offer is in the village itself. Around the Xaver-Terofal-Platz, the village square, there are inns, bakeries and shops, and it is four minutes’ walk from the square to the water. Start and finish the walk here and both ends are taken care of.

On the island of Wörth in the middle of the lake there is an inn. You cannot walk there: at its nearest point the island is just under two hundred metres off the west shore. You can get there by boat.

We are on the square ourselves, with the restaurant, the bar and the beer garden under the chestnut tree in front of the house. If you walk round the lake and do not feel like cooking afterwards, you pass our door anyway.

We deliberately do not list other businesses’ opening times and prices here. They change, and nothing is more annoying than a page that promises you an open door that turns out to be shut. The addresses below take you straight to the operators.