Kniebis is a high, straggling village on the ridge at the southern end of the Black Forest High Road, a place where the forest opens out into heath and old fields. At around nine hundred metres, with open views to the south and the dark ridges of the Black Forest in every other direction, it has a bracing, slightly lonely feel. It belongs administratively to Freudenstadt, and it is best known as a spot for walking and cross-country skiing, with a network of trails across the moorland.
The ridge has seen its share of soldiers. In the eighteenth century, the passes on the Kniebis were fortified with earthworks, called Schanzen, to guard the route into the Rhine plain, and the lines were manned during the wars with revolutionary France. Some of the earth ramparts still run through the woods and can be traced on a walk. The name Kniebis is of uncertain origin, but the place has been a crossing point for centuries, and later became a modest holiday village with guesthouses and a church.
The road here is the tail end of the Schwarzwaldhochstrasse, which comes down from Ruhestein and the Schliffkopf along the ridge, and the riding is relaxed and rolling. It is not a road of tight corners, but of long, open bends through dark forest with occasional views through gaps in the trees. In late spring the heath is brown and wet, and in September the bilberries are ripe along the verges. The surface is generally very good, and the traffic is a mixture of cyclists, motorcyclists and families in cars, particularly in summer. The weather turns quickly, with cold fog on some mornings even when the valley below is warm.
Services are modest. There are guesthouses and inns, and a few places to eat, but for fuel you should go to Baiersbronn, about seven kilometres away, which is a large village with a good range of shops, or to Freudenstadt, which has more of everything. Freudenstadt is worth a stop for its square, one of the largest market squares in Germany, laid out in the early seventeenth century around a plan that was never fully completed.
Autumn brings golden light and the smell of woodsmoke.