The Langenmuhle Linden

The house beside this linden was built in the fifteenth century. Which of the two came first, nobody has written down. The Langenmuhle is one of the water mills strung along the Tauber below Rothenburg, its main building late medieval, its stone barn dated 1875, and it marks the northern edge of the old town's protected ensemble. The lime beside it is listed separately and on its own account, number 46 on the Bavarian natural monuments register, which records it as a linden at the Langenmuhle and stops there. No age. No girth. Not even which of the limes it is. The record of the place itself still describes a designated linden standing there, in the present tense, and that is the whole file. Take it as part of the valley rather than as a destination in itself. The Langenmuhle sits 2.3 kilometres downstream of the walls on the Taubertalweg, about half an hour on the flat, on the same path that passes the Fuchsmuhle and its own protected linden. The mill is a private house and farm and the register places the tree by it rather than inside it, so this is one to see from the road. If you walk out there, two things are worth sending back: whether the tree is genuinely visible from the public road, and anything anyone locally knows about its age.