About

Hi, I'm Harald — hiking, travel and being outdoors have long been a big part of my life. best-weather.com is where I share tours, trips and the occasional gear note — honest, thorough, readable, with the facts I myself like to read before setting off: actual routes, real elevation, what it was really like.

Tao Qian, Tuschezeichnung

On the way to the Peach Blossom Spring

The Chinese literatus Tao Qian (365–427 CE) recounts in his Account of Peach Blossom Spring the tale of a fisherman who one day stumbles into a hidden valley: a place cut off from the noisy outside world, where people live a harmonious, carefree life in idyllic surroundings. When the fisherman returns, he can never find the way again. In this story Tao Qian expresses his longing for an ideal community and a life in tune with nature.

In a sense, every walk into nature is for me such a way to the Peach Blossom Spring — deeply restorative and meditative. Perhaps that's part of what I want to share here.

What you'll find here

  • Tour reports with GPX track, elevation profile and photos of every leg — long-distance hikes as well as day tours close to home.
  • Travel reports on foot through European cities and regions — from Garmisch to Sterzing across the Alps, through Rome's eternal streets, into the Highlands.
  • Gear notes — what actually proved itself on a long hike, what didn't, what I'd take again.

Honest, thorough, readable. If a link points to a product, that's stated openly.

Behind the scenes

Who actually builds this? By trade I'm a software architect and developer; best-weather.com is one of several sites under the roof of my company CARECOM®. It runs on a fast, hand-built Blazor foundation — created with the AI Claude as a pair programmer. There's more about me and my work at carecom.de and — for anyone who enjoys not just the result but the tech behind it — in the behind-the-scenes piece on this site's launch. Looking for a software architect or developer? I'd be glad to hear from you.

A footnote on the name: I live in a town called Wetter (German for weather), on the Hochstraße (High Street). The domain almost wrote itself.

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