22-Sep-2008 -- Story continued from 49°N 8°E.

My meeting in Walldorf started at 10:00, and the hotel was just 25 minutes away, so I could have slept in, then had a long, leisurely breakfast. Instead I got up very early, grabbed a couple of rolls from the breakfast buffet, and started driving towards this confluence.

The very first thing I hit was a highway detour, costing about 5 minutes, but then everything was OK until I got close to Pforzheim where I was going to leave A8 and take smaller roads towards Hohenhaslach. Probably due to road works a bit further east, the traffic came to a near standstill, so I got off at the first exit, then drove through Pforzheim on some rather narrow residential streets, then got back on track after losing close to half an hour. This reduced my time margin significantly.

In Hohenhaslach I followed my GPS into the town center, then WNW for about a km until I found the point where I believe most previous visitors must have started, a parking spot for hikers just on the outskirts of the forest.

I had parked my rental car about 650 m from the confluence, so I just started to jog towards it, following the GPS direction cross country after the first 100 m along a forest road. The terrain was very hilly, and partly covered with sticky brambles, so I got quite warm before I suddenly spotted a big bulldozer.

This 'dozer had obviously been used to improve the forest roads, but now it was parked alongside this road, exactly on the confluence itself! I had to climb over it while doing the confluence dance, finally deciding that the zero point was located on top of the 'dozer hood, which is where I took a 360-degree panorama.

Going back towards the car I first followed the forest road, then passed the confluence sign (placed according to a German map datum?) before spotting the nice mountain bike path leading downhill and almost directly towards the car park. Before starting on this trip I had read several of the previous visitor reports, but unfortunately not the very informative one by Gerhard Kaufmann, describing this trail!

Back down at the car I discovered that I had forgotten to zip up my jacket pocket, but the car keys were still there. Unfortunately, my wallet was not! Had I left it in the car as I usually do? I searched inside, under and around the car but could not find it, so I ran back up to the point and around, reversing my previous track, without finding it. Back at the car I searched some more, and this time I did find the wallet, I had left it in a small outside pocket of my PC bag when I packed my stuff in the morning. I still managed to get to Walldorf by 10, so everything was OK.