Vineyards, bunkers and a castle

Last sunday we couldn’t resist the beautiful weather and drove from Karlsruhe to Oberotterbach for a short hike in the Palatinate forest.

We parked right in the middle of Oberotterbach, followed the roads north-west out of town. The trail followed the hillside north. To our right was the Oberrheinische Tiefebene (plain around the river rhine) and to our left the woods of the Pfälzer Wald began. It was a little hazy and so the view could have been better but the sun already felt more like August than April.

Soon we reached Dörrenbach, passed an old fortified church (Wehrkirche) and left the village again turning west.

Form here on the trail followed the Westwall and we passed by the remains of many bunkers built between 1938 and 1940. There wasn’t much left of these bunkers but there were many signs with diagrams of how it looked before the demolition crews went to work.

The picture on the right is not from one of these bunkers. This is a view down the stairs of a tower overlooking the Palatinate forest somewhere south of Böllenborn. Even with the aforementioned haziness the view was still beautiful.

What we didn’t know when we picked the tour was that a Mountain Bike Club from the area organized a tour that very day. Dozens of bikes passed us but the trails were wide enough to avoid any problems. We did not know the size of the MTB group, so we stopped for lunch to let them pass. But our break was not long enough to let the whole group pass us so we continued, frequently jumping aside to avoid more or less skilled bikers rushing by.

Soon we reached the ruins of Burg Guttenberg and stopped for 30 minutes to enjoy the sun. We noticed that the map in the guide book and the descriptions right next to it id not match. The maps showed the trail we actually took, circling back to Oberottenbach passing Rechtenbach. The description was for the direct route from the castle back to Oberottenbach.

From the castle the trail went mostly downwards until we reached the ponds outside Rechtenbach where we turned left towards Oberottenbach. One last steep incline in the heat killed the last bit of strength still left and we were glad when we reached the car a few minutes later. After walking in the heat for quite some time we were looking forward for something cold, preferably ice cream. But the cafe next to where we parked wasn’t that much into customer service so we decided to leave when nobody acknowledged our presence. We drove back to Karlsruhe, barbecued some sausages and ordered ice cream from a pizza service

Total Distance: 20.54 km (12.8 mi)
Total Time: 4:46:41
Moving Time: 3:34:03
Average Speed: 4.30 km/h (2.7 mi/h)
Average Moving Speed: 5.76 km/h (3.6 mi/h)
Max Speed: 9.00 km/h (5.6 mi/h)
Min Elevation: 234 m (769 ft)
Max Elevation: 558 m (1831 ft)
Elevation Gain: 775 m (2543 ft)
Max Grade: 26 %
Min Grade: -20 %
Recorded: Sun Apr 25 11:09:24 GMT+02:00 2010
Activity type: hiking