Leo's Cave; Manfred's road. A trip to the Pfalz Forest

Joy and I rented a car in Germany and set out to drive the very, very narrow and twisty roads through the largest remaining primeval forest in Germany. In my novel Adlerhof, Leo and Hermann's cave is in the woods and mountains that rise up suddenly behind the small village of Radtsdorf. I was surprised at how well reality matched my imagination. It was as if I had written a specific history, the scenes were so exactly as I had imagined them.

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In the novel, Trau and Zimmer try to flee through the Pfalz Forest and Mountains to reach the border of the Saar, the last bit of Germany still controlled by the French. I saw first hand what a rugged trip it would be on foot for two men out of shape and lacking a good map. Though not as high as the Appalachians, the Pfalz mountains are VERY steep and thickly wooded. The valleys are quite narrow, often no more than two hundred yards across. There are not a lot of castle ruins--there were not a lot of castles in a place as remote as the Pfalz Forest. This dearth is a reflection of the simple economic fact that it's hard to be a robber baron with nobody passing through to rob. Here is one of the castle ruins we came upon; notice the evidently Renaissance addition to the medieval castle had also fallen into ruin. Only the power lines in the photo gives it away as a modern scene at all.
I was not specifically looking for the road on which Manfred escaped the French ambush but I stumbled across it. The first photo is the road just before the bend around which the French were hiding and the second photo is of the drop off down which the auto and it riders tumbled.