2009-04-25 48 8
| Sat 25 Apr 2009 in Pforzheim: 48.4809778, 8.3527699 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox |
Contents
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
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. 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.
Getting to Freudenstadt: Koepfel
From Freudenstadt to the hash and down to Schönmünzach
It was no problem finding another on the platform as we were the only passengers who came with bikes. We went for a short side trip into town, and Ekorren needed to buy some food and drinks.
Freudenstadt is a planned city that almost looks like a game board of Nine_Men's_Morris. Unlike almost all other towns in Europe, it hasn't grown from a village, or a medieval town, or any other historic site but was built as a whole at the beginning of the 17th century, as a new side residence for the Duke of Württemberg. It features a market square that is actually really a square and is said to be the largest of Germany. All this on a rather small area on a hilltop, or rather a ridge, in the middle of the Black Forest.
So we took a short visit to the market place and then went on for our quest. There was a side valley we had to cross, and a small castle we saw but didn't realize that that building really was the castle, and then we needed to go up on a mountain.
The bad thing was: No map that we had available, including the official 1:50.000 topographic map, showed any decent way up from this side of the mountain. The choice was to either take a huge detour of several kilometres, or try and find some forest track up which wasn't shown on the maps. Since this was only for a short distance, we went for version 2, and part pushed, part carried our bikes over a hiking trail up. It wasn't easy, but not as bad as it could have gone.
Then we made our way over good forest tracks in the direction of the hash, until we came to an intersection where two things waited for us: some leftover snow, and a total stranger who wasn't really decided what to do next.
Gallery
Train from Tübingen to Horb
Both of the trains we arrived with at Freudenstadt Stadtbahnhof
Main church of Freudenstadt
Old town hall
We had to cross this valley
A view back on Freudenstadt
Not a decent cycle trail, but a shortcut.
There was snow!
Coordinates reached
Hash path. We took the hard way, anyway.
The hash point is stone(d).
Just an old marker on the way
Sankenbach waterfall
Sankenbach lake
Sankenbach lake
