2009-04-03 49 12

Fri 3 Apr 2009 in 49,12: 49.1842062, 12.1462521 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Not far from 2008-10-11 49 12, on a steep slope in the mountainous forest area between the Regen valley and Leonberg, about 25km north of Regensburg.

dawidi with Tomcat and Hans

dawidi: We met after work, around 17:00, at the start of the Regen valley cycleway, in the north of Regensburg. Finally spring is setting in! Cycling was enjoyable at around 20°C, with sunshine and a gentle wind from the east. I had my smaller, infrared-converted camera in my pocket so I could take pictures while riding (which is why well over half the pictures taken during the trip were in monochrome infrared instead of "regular" color).

After a minor mis-routing in Regenstauf, we arrived at the foot of the hills about 2km north of Ramspau. The track leading uphill was wet and muddy for the first hundred meters or so, but then it was dry and my bike had no problem climbing it. Tomcat's and Hans' electric bikes have the motor in the front wheel and the weight of the battery on the rear wheel, which was not quite optimal for such a steep, somewhat slippery track, so they had to push a bit more often. The tracks didn't entirely match up with Garmin's topo map, so we ended up going a different route than I had planned, and passed by an interesting small peak in the forest, consisting of very large, very round, moss-covered rocks. (As far as I can see from the map, the peak's name is Eulenberg: Peak of owls!) We climbed the rocks and found a peculiar hollow in the highest of them, filled with leaves and water. I wonder what kind of erosion created this...

Then the way lead downhill again and got grassier, and we passed by an old, mossy "no driving" sign on a tree (which is odd, because there were no drivable roads in sight anyway). Uphill again, and then we ended up leaving our bikes between blueberry bushes at the top of another hill in lighter forest and going the last 100m to the coordinates on foot. They turned out to be on a rather steep north-facing slope in denser forest again. Since the sun had set already, we didn't stay there for long after the usual pictures and tree-writing, but did rest a bit after getting back to our bikes at the top.

Not wanting to trace back that same difficult route back during dusk, we instead carried our bikes onwards, down the hill towards the west (over a mixture of rocks, sticks, grass and mud) until we found something that could be called a path again. Thanks to not listening to my suggestions about how to plot a route back into the valley, we ended up finding a rather good (and even marked!) hiking trail that took us to a scenic view to the west (nice post-sunset sky over Leonberg), then turned to the east and lead through a narrow valley and saw us emerging from the forest a couple of hundred meters farther south than we entered. Whew!

We sped through the night to Ramspau, and when we didn't find any open restaurants there, continued on to Regenstauf, where we found an inviting, traditional inn. One and a half hours later, and now nicely full and relaxed, we resumed the way back along the Regen, stopping only for a tiny geocache. We split up near my home shortly before midnight.

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  Cycling near Lorenzen (IR)

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  Cycling north of Regenstauf (IR)

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  Sunny forest, after covering about half the elevation (IR)

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  Onward, then!

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  Partially, the way was too soft and steep and we had to push (IR)

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  Eulenberg peak

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  A peculiar water hole on the peak

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  Hans, dawidi, Tomcat, on the Eulenberg peak

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  There are no drivable roads here anyway, so uh...?

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  Light forest above the hash (IR)

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  Coordinates reached :)

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  All three at the hash

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  The unavoidable treefiti

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  A short rest, back at our bikes, before we start the journey back.