The lake with electric boats because of a grumpy prince

Here's the Königssee detail I love. Every tour boat crossing this lake has run on electric power since 1909, and most visitors quietly assume it's an early example of environmental thinking. It wasn't. Prince Regent Luitpold of Bavaria kept a hunting lodge nearby, and the petrol boats of the day were noisy enough to keep spoiling his shoot, so he simply had the fleet switched to electric to keep things quiet on his lake.

More than a century on, tourists gliding silently toward St Bartholomew's chapel are still benefiting from one irritated prince's hunting trips. Partway across, the captains still stop the boat and play a trumpet out toward the cliffs, purely so everyone on board can hear the famous echo roll back across the water, up to seven times if conditions are right.

I painted the lake in watercolour and ink, that impossibly still, deep water. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here: Königssee, Bavaria · Travel Poster