2012-05-20 48 9
| Sun 20 May 2012 in 48,9: 48.3144146, 9.2732569 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox |
Contents
Location
Trochtelfingen-Steinhilben, at an agricultural track
Participants
Ekorren went from here to the next day's hash by bike
Expedition
When checking the coordinates for the sunday and monday I found that it might be possible to connect those by bike with some detours over the Alb. However, I wouldn't want to go to the first hash all by bike in that case so I checked for nearby stops of the touristical train and bus network with bike transport. I found a bus that would take me and my bike to a village about 5 km from the hash, going around noon. Ok, that's fine.
Got off at Oberstetten and went for the hash, which was at a place of very typical Alb landscape.
To continue, I didn't really select a route. I just went along a general direction, and tried to use ways which I hadn't used too many times before (or better: never before), which made it more interesting but at the other hand meant there were more hills to overcome than going along the valleys. In the early evening, I had made it to Münsingen and continued to the former village of Gruorn.
Gruorn had been depopulated in the late 1930s, when the military claimed its region as a training ground. Over the next few decades, the village was successively shot into ruins and broken down. In the end, only the church and the school were left. These two finally were repaired and are still intact today. When the military usage of the area ended, small parts of the training ground got opened for the public.
So I reached Gruorn quite late, and as one of the last visitors of the day, while the others were about leaving and also the museum staff went home. A thunderstorm came up in a distance. This is quite a tradition, it seems - almost any time when I went to that former military grounds, I got surprised by a thunderstorm. With almost no buildings, on an elevated plain, the roads through the area are not quite a place where you want to meet up with lightning as a biker. So I decided to stay in safety at Gruorn, until it was clear that the thunderstorm wouldn't come any closer, before I crossed the place.
To get back down from the mountains I chose a little road from Hülben to Dettingen/Erms this time. It was rather impressing how it was broken into the rocks of the steep slope. And suddenly I remembered that I had been on this road earlier, failing to reach a hash that was only a few metres from the road...
Now in the dark, I waited for it getting even later and then went on for the midnight Geohashing Day hash at Metzingen.
Gallery
Closing in. The hash is somewhere over there.
Here
View from hash
View from hash
View from hash
Hash resident (living about 20 m from the hash)
Killbergteich (= Kill mountain lake)
... with plants...
... and fish!
Sheeeeeeeeeeep!
Distant view on Gruorn
Some leftovers from Gruorn's better times
Fake house for military training
I must insist, according to traffic legislation, those sheep should have given me way!
More military leftovers: A bunker...
... a tower...
... and the ruins of some farm
An UFO?
Evening views from the Albtrauf
Ooops. Some giant must have stumbled over this mountain and lost his glasses!
