2014-04-23 49 8

Location

Near Moerlenbach-Weiher.

Participants

Plans

To ride from Bad Homburg to Heppenheim by train and then by bike via the hashpoint home to Speyer.

Expedition

I started pretty early at 9 am in Bad Homburg at the hotel, got the train to Frankfurt at 9:30 and continued to Heppenheim at 10:06. Immediate after Heppenheim started the hardest part of the whole holiday: the ascent to Juhöhe from 100m to 420m in 6 KM (and nearly an hour). I didn't follow the busy street for the most time but some forest pathes that were even steeper than the street, which soon was far below me. As the dusty ground didn't give enough grip in the steep ground, I had to push my bike for some distances. The descent wasn't that much fun either as it had some water gutters in it that worked like speed bumps.

But the way through the Mörlenbach valley was as great as the weather and soon enough I reached the point where - according to komoot - was the closest road to the hash. Here I found out that I forgot to load the hashpoint to my Garmin and hashdroid didn't work without internet either. All I had was the waypoint on my komoot-app. The road was a dead end leading to private property but immediate before that there was a very steep meadow that leads into a forest. I decided to climb up the meadow, but when I reached the forest it was impassable as it was full of thorn hedges and not far away I saw a fence that blocked the way anyway.

I was about to give up but the map shows me a road through the forrest 200 m further and I decided to make another attempt from there. I nearly forgot why I was there, when there were some - no, not kittens but - goats. But duty was calling and so I parked my bike and climbed through the forrest. I was very slow as the groud was steep like hell and I was always in danger to slip down the hill. There were some houses below me and some people in the gardens watched me and were certainly wondering what I was doing in their (felt) backyard, but as I was 100 m away (and around 20 m above), they couldn't ask. Step by step I came closer to the desired waypoint and just before I reached the fence again, which I have seen from the other side, the two points covered each other. The accuracy of the map wasn't very good, and so I wasn't sure if I was good enough, but I couldn't do better now. I even found another path some meters above me which was much more convenient for my way back to the bike, but before that I took some photos and had some strawberries (what should suffice for a picnic achievement (if I was at the hash at all)).

On the other side of Weiher another very steep ascent awaits me and led me below a beautiful train bridge. After that I could ride in a gentle valley down to Weinheim and through the rhine plain back home, not without having a stop at Ladenburg for some ice cream and some weiss beer. Back at home I loaded up my track and found out that I was maximum 5 m of the hashpoint. Given the accuracy within the dense forrest I think I can claim a success for that.

Last station on my journey was 2014-04-22_50_8.