Private Black Forest Tours and Tailor-Made Journeys

What the Black Forest actually is

The Black Forest is not a single place, and this is the first thing to settle with a client. It runs about 160 kilometres north to south along the Rhine valley and is 60 kilometres across at its widest — larger than several German federal states. The north around Baden-Baden is spa country: broad valleys, grand hotels, a casino Dostoyevsky lost money in. The centre is the one people picture, with the deep-cut valleys, the farmhouses under enormous hipped roofs, and the clockmaking towns. The south towards the Swiss border is higher, emptier and more Alpine in feel, with the Feldberg at 1,493 metres and long views to the Alps on a clear winter day.

A client who says they want to see the Black Forest usually means the centre, arrives with two nights, and is disappointed if the days are spent driving. We build it the other way round: one base, and the region brought to the client.

Baden-Baden, and why it still works

Baden-Baden is the entry point for most first visits and the easiest sell. The Romans bathed here, the nineteenth century turned it into the summer capital of Europe, and enough of that survives to be worth a day: the Kurhaus and its casino, the Trinkhalle colonnade, the Lichtentaler Allee along the river, and two thermal baths that could not be less alike. Friedrichsbad is a nineteenth-century Roman-Irish bath, textile-free and strictly sequenced, which delights some guests and horrifies others — we ask before we book. Caracalla next door is swimwear, modern and family-suitable.

The Festspielhaus is Germany’s largest opera and concert house and programmes at a level that surprises people who expect a spa town. For clients travelling for music, we check the schedule before the dates are fixed rather than after.

The clockmaking valleys

Clockmaking here began as winter work for farming families and turned into an industry that supplied the world. The German Clock Museum in Furtwangen holds the serious collection and is better than its modest name suggests. Triberg has the waterfalls, Germany’s highest at 163 metres, and the tourism that comes with them; we go early or late. Schonach holds the largest cuckoo clocks, which are more charming than they sound.

What lands hardest with clients is a working craftsman rather than a museum case. There are still carvers and clockmakers who will receive a small party in the workshop and explain what they are doing while they do it. That is a booking, not a drop-in, and it needs a fortnight.

Eating, which is the surprise

The Black Forest has the densest concentration of Michelin stars in Germany, and most visitors have no idea. Baiersbronn alone, a village of 15,000 people in a side valley, holds two three-star houses — Schwarzwaldstube at the Traube Tonbach and Restaurant Bareiss — which is a concentration matched almost nowhere in Europe. Tables go months ahead and the kitchens close for weeks at a time; we hold rather than hope.

Below that level the region eats extremely well and much more simply: Vesperstuben serving cold platters, trout from the valley streams, and the Baden wine villages of the Kaiserstuhl and the Ortenau on the warm western slope. Baden is Germany’s warmest wine region and the growers receive small parties properly when they are asked in advance.

Getting around, and the roads worth driving

The region rewards a car and a driver who knows the valleys. The Schwarzwaldhochstrasse runs 60 kilometres along the ridge from Baden-Baden towards Freudenstadt with the views the drive is famous for. The Deutsche Uhrenstrasse loops through the clockmaking towns. The Badische Weinstrasse follows the vineyards along the western edge. None of them is a motorway and none of them should be rushed.

Trains reach the edges — Freiburg, Offenburg, Baden-Baden — but not the valleys. For a party of any size a private vehicle is not a luxury here, it is the only way the day works.

Where clients should sleep

Two bases cover most itineraries. Baden-Baden in the north, for spa, culture and easy arrival from Frankfurt. Baiersbronn or the Kinzig valley in the centre, for the forest itself, the kitchens and the craft workshops. Freiburg in the south suits clients combining the Black Forest with Alsace or Switzerland; it is a university city with a cathedral tower Jacob Burckhardt called the finest in Christendom, and a genuinely pleasant place to spend an evening.