2022-02-27 50 11

Location

In a field near Oettern. Looks like it's close to a path, so it should be reachable.

Participants

Plans

I'm planning to go there by bike from Jena, start time depends on the temperature. Anna

Expedition

The morning was cold enough to achieve a frozen geohash, but cycling 20 km in below freezing temperatures is a bit too extreme for me. I waited until it had warmed up a bit. Even so, some parts of the route were very cold and windy. Even on the way back, one small stream was still half frozen over! Otherwise, it was very nice, sunny weather.

I was very pleased to see that multiple new bike paths have been built along the expedition route since I last cycled in that region. Even so, I made the mistake to follow my GPS instead of the signposted bike path when I left Mellingen towards Oettern. The GPS sent me down some gnarly, steep hiking paths that would probably have been fun for mountain bikers, but forced me to get off and walk.

As predicted, the point was in a field; the last few hundred meters of the approach were very muddy paths. The point itself was pretty boring and I called the 4 m shot close enough, because I didn't want to trample the young plants in the field.

On the way back, I followed the official bike path and had a very pleasant ride home.

Notable flora and fauna

multiple Red Kites hunting on newly planted fields
Eurasian Coots on an aquaculture pond
off-leash dogs on the bike path (argh, why?!)
a strip of last years sunflowers at the edge of a field that were never harvested (maybe a distraction for birds?)