While taking my daily walk with my dog in the forest near my house, called Gréngewald in Luxembourgish, I finally discovered something that has been intriguing me for some time.
I have often come across this photograph in signposts scattered along this forest but I never knew what it was about.
I have to say that despite not being a scary cat I always thought the signposts looked a bit spooky. Even more so when walking late in the evening or in vary dark and stormy days. I even speculated about different stories these girls could have possibly had, and they were usually something along the lines of The Shining.
Well, today that mystery came to an end as I took a path I never took before.
As Luna, my lovely dog, sat down to have a little rest from retrieving sticks and running all over the place I noticed a junction in the forest with an info panel of some sort. When I approached it I realized it was precisely about the six girls of the spooky picture I had seen many times.
So the story goes that these six girls were actually princesses, their names were Marie-Adelheid, Charlotte, Hilda, Antonia, Elisabeth and Sophie, daughters of Great Duke Guillaume IV of Luxembourg. They were born between 1984 and 1902 and they seemed to have loved nature around this area where they spent time while some family members were busy hunting.
A red oak was planted for each of the six princesses and they are still there. Only one of them was replanted since the original one came down after a heavy storm.
So these are the six red oaks planted in honour of each princess, and that was the mystery solved. No more speculation about terrible stories that could have happened to these six girls. Now I know that those six beautiful red oaks are as old as 121 years of age and they have a little story to tell.
Note: Pictures taken with a mobile phone so the quality isn't brilliant.