2016-05-28 49 9

Location

In a woody slope east of Weibersbrunn.

Participants

Plans

The ladies aren't at home this weekend and so I decided to try to complete my minesweeper achievement by hashing in the missing Fulda-graticule in the NE. As I have the time, I wanted to reach the hashes by foot (and train of course,I can't walk 200 KM in one (or even two) days.

Well, todays hash is in the very far northern part of the graticule and it's hard to get there. But tomorrow it's quit in the south. So I decided to visit the hash in the Würzburg-graticule today and walk afterwards a third of the distance between the two hashes today. I think I can walk to the Fulda hash tomorrow, if it is reachable at all (it's on the ground of tennis club).

Expedition

Before I could start walking I had a long ride on four different trains. I started at Speyer at 9:02 changed to the ICE to Frankfurt in Mannheim, switched trains in Frankfurt and Aschaffenburg again and reached Laufach at a quarter to 12. From now on I had to hurry. There was a more than 30-KM-walk before me and I didn't want to arrive at the hotel to late.

The region of the following walks is called Spessart, and is a quite famous low mountain range in Germany, covered over by the typical middle european beech forest. Laufach is located in a valley - like stations mostly are. First I had to rise to the Spessart heights.A rabbit crossed my way to welcome me in his district and a short time later I almost stumbled upon a blindworm (to be honest, after this start I hardly saw any wild animals for the rest of the two days). Except for a short time, when I crossed the village Waldaschaff I was walking through deep forest, mostly consisting of beeches. The birds were singing, the sun was shining and it wasn't to hot (except when I had to climb on a rampant small path). After three hours my way goes down into a valley and I reached a natural protection area where they let the forest develop on its own. The path gets steeper and soon I reached the street in the idyllic ground. But before I was allowed to follow the lovely valley I had a task to perform. And so I raised up on the other side again. Less than ten minutes later hashdroid sent me into the deep forest on my left. Before I left the path, I scratched an xkcd in the ground then I followed a steep inclining forest aisle. After some dancing through the thicket I found out that the hash must be at the aisle itself and declared a stump to be the hash-stump. I found a big wooden X on the ground. Giant-Ninjas? After some pictures I builded an X on my own. It has become a quarter to four meanwhile, and as I still had 15 KM to go. That's why I decided that that is good enough for a saturday meet up and returned to the forest track. I scratched another xkcd in the softer ground at the slope of the way for a better visibility and returned to the former mentioned valley.

I followed the rivulet, that was called Hafenlohr for the next 8 KM until I reached the village Rothenbuch, where I had to leave the valley to overcome another big hill. I was pretty exhausted and had hardly any water left so this last rise was really hard for me. Well, nevertheless I made it. I bypassed another peek by staying on the road and at half past six the way was going down again. I knew that at the end of the decline is Heigenbrücken with the Hotel. I got there some minutes after seven after an exhausting but beautiful walk. And I should mention that -after a bath and some minutes rest - I had one of my best meals ever at this evening. A real celebration of hashing.