2009-06-20 49 8

From Geohashing
Sat 20 Jun 2009 in Mannheim:
49.1625773, 8.7251129
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Location

Today, the hashpoint is in a field near Neuenbürg, a formerly independent village, now a part of the town of Kraichtal, in which smaller villages were merged into in 1971.

Planning

Taking the S32 light rail from Karlsruhe-Durlach to Menzingen, bike from there to the Hash, back via the S31 from Odenheim.

Expedition by Koepfel

Report

I left my home at about 14:10 and cycled to to Durlach train station, way faster than I expected. Because of that, I managed to see my S32 train going to the main station, where it turned to go back to Menzingen. At 14:37, it was back in Durlach and I got on, not before wondering about the oddly numbered platforms in Durlach.

Roughly 40 minutes later, I arrived in Menzingen, the terminus of the Kraichtalbahn.. From there, I headed towards the Hashpoint, or at least I tried, since I got lost in Menzingen, accidentially taking the wrong road. Eventually, I found the right road out of Menzingen and headed through the Kraichgau, a hilly area seperating the Odenwald from the Schwarzwald (Black Forest), mainly containing wheat fields and a small settlements.

With my detours in Menzingen and the area being more hilly than I expected, I was getting more and more afraid of not reaching the Hashpoint in time at 16:00. At 16:00, my GPS showed about 300 meters left. As the Hashpoint was in sight, I guess one could still call this a 16:00 saturday meetup.

I parked my bike at the edge of a field, with the GPS pointing into it, about 80 meters to go. However, the field contained a vast system of tractor tracks that allowed me to reach the Hashpoint up to 10 meters without destroying anything. Continuing to the Hashpoint might have been possible, however, this might have had resulted in damaged crops, so I decided, that this is a reasonable distance to stop.

After staying at the Hash until about 16:30, I continued cycling to Odenheim, a 3700 people village, terminus of the Katzbachbahn (Cat Creek Railway). Both the Katzbachbahn and the Kraichtalbahn were built in 1896, to connect small Kraichgau villages to the Main Line in Bruchsal. Despite being close to abandonment several times in its history, they were converted to Light Rail lines in 1996.

At 17:03, I left Odenheim, in the S31 back to Karlsruhe, arriving home at about 17:50.

(more pictures)