2009-04-25 48 8

Sat 25 Apr 2009 in Pforzheim: 48.4809778, 8.3527699 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

The hash in the Black Forest, somewhere in the middle of nowhere on a mountain near Baiersbronn.

It's actually the first expedition that goes into the Black Forest, all earlier ones in this area were somewhere outside or at the very margin of the mountains.

Participants

• Ekorren
• Koepfel
• Anonymous Drag-along

Expedition

Getting to Freudenstadt: Ekorren

It was either this hash or the one in 48,9. Both of them seemed to be accessible, both wouldn't be too boring. I had almost decided for the other one when Koepfel announced that he would also attend this one. We agreed to shift the meetup time to 14:00, announced that on the graticule page and went on with our planning.

It was too far to go there all by bike, more so as it is a mountainous area and following the valleys means huge detours. On the other hand, I could have taken a train from Tübingen all the way to Freudenstadt, but that one would be too expensive. There is a way to get there for a good price, though: Go by bike to Rottenburg first, which is only about 11 km from my home, on an all-tarnac low-slopes route, and where the train would leave at 10:15. So I went for that, and started around 9:30.

I was faster than usual on that route, and arrived at the station in good time at 10:00. Boarded the train and went for Horb. Usually, to get to Freudenstadt you stay on that train until Hochdorf and change there to a train from Eutingen. But on a sunny spring saturday like this, there might be a problem: There are sometimes large groups with bikes coming from Stuttgart, and as the train to Freudenstadt is a bit low on bike space, it usually is a good idea to be on the train before they arrive to make sure you get a place. Which is possible by a small trick: just take the train to Stuttgart until Eutingen and enter the train to Freudenstadt there.

So I did. It was crazy. There were incredible amounts of incredibly stupid and partly already incredibly drunk human beings, going to Stuttgart to watch an incredibly boring game called soccer. There was place enough in the compartments, there were free seats in the upper deck, but instead of finding themselves some space, they huddled together in the entrance rooms, blocking the doors, making it difficult to enter or leave the train. Which probably was why the train was late, but it wasn't late too much anyway, so it would still arrive at Eutingen before the train from Stuttgart would be there.

Somehow I squeezed myself and the bike into one of those overoccupied entrance rooms, trying not to step on an empty bottle or make any honest remarks. When people asked whether I had a bomb in the box on my luggage holder, I confessed and asked them to take it to the stadium because it would be much more efficient to blow it up there than in the Black Forest. They refused and almost went into panic. Too bad they finally did not flee the car because a little more space would have been quite a plus.

I was glad this was only a ten minutes trip, and, arriving at Eutingen, I found that all my doubts about enough space on the train to Freudenstadt had been unnecessary - the connecting train from Stuttgart was half an hour late so ours went off empty, as most of its passengers were still stuck somewhere half way.

At noon, and 738 m above sea level, the train reached Freudenstadt city station where it met a train from Karlsruhe, which Koepfel had taken to get here.

Gallery

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  Train from Tübingen to Horb

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  Both of the trains we arrived with at Freudenstadt Stadtbahnhof

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  Main church of Freudenstadt

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  Old town hall

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  We had to cross this valley

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  A view back on Freudenstadt

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  Not a decent cycle trail, but a shortcut.

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  There was snow!

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  Coordinates reached

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  Hash path. We took the hard way, anyway.

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  The hash point is stone(d).

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  Just an old marker on the way

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  Sankenbach waterfall

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  Sankenbach lake

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  Sankenbach lake