Worlds largest cuckoo clock

14 October 2011

We spent the day looking through cuckoo clock shops, taking the black forest mountain train, climbing the Hornberg castle, going inside the worlds biggest cuckoo clocks, and trying some black forest cake all in the heart of the black forest.

The area is such an amazing place with cute little villages nestled between forest covered mountains.



We had a chilly start this morning where we climbed the forest paths to the castle in Hornberg.


This is climbing to the top of the castle tower which has been standing since 1300.


Looking across the valley into the black forest from the top of the tower


This is the largest cuckoo clock with the most moving clocks in the world. It was really exciting to see on the hour where for 5 minutes all these things happened


This is a gigantic weather station (probably the worlds largest) where the lady comes out when the weather is good and the man comes out when the weather is bad


We caught the black forest train through the mountains to Villigen-Schwenningen


We explored Villigen-Schwenningen. This is the main stream with a very Autumn look to the trees


All of these little towns has a wall around the old city. This was the main entrance into the town


The main church had very different towers


This is the worlds largest cuckoo clock. On the hour a large 4 metre long cuckoo came out.


We also went inside the clock. This was the huge pendulum moving back and forth


These were all the giant clock parts made of wood with the cuckoo bird at the top and the sound cylinders that made the cuckoo noise on the bottom left. The robot man told us all about the clock.


We went threw loads of cuckoo clock shops and we felt like it was Christmas it was so fun. All the clocks were quite different: some had lots of moving parts with dancing ladies, music, sawing wood, moving waterwheels, chopping wood, drinking beer and some were more simple with really nicely crafted leaves and animals.


We tried some black forest cake from the cafe with the original recipe in Triberg


This was a slightly different cuckoo clock with a mushroom instead of a house


This place has hundreds of clocks everywhere. From battery laser cut cuckoo clocks to handcrafted mechanical cuckoo clocks