Old streets
There is a whole network of ancient streets. Some of them were improved, asphalted, and have become "Chaussees" - some of them even highways. Some of them are still somewhat in use, as ways for hikers or bikers; but some of them, especially in remote and wild areas have been more or less forgotten and are nearly only begone by those who use them. I'm a conoisseur of roads. I and my friend spent two days when the virus took over to follow the high way between Kocher and Jagst in 2021. We had planned to visit a big city, I believe it was Hamburg, but cancelled this. Instead I had the idea to walk along this street after reading about it in the Wikipedia. My friend accepted. Over the hills and far away. I was able to restore some infos from a defunct blog of some guy who walked the street a few years ago by accessing it via the Waybackmachine, also hosting entries from a book were someone described the street shortly after WW2 (you can check the german text along with some good images here: https://web.archive.org/web/20140311092016/http://www.michls.de/hohe-strasse/index.html ), and planned the route via google earth. Old streets follow the watershed; this is because the watershed rarely gets marshy, since every rain will flow down from it - leaving the ways almost alltime passable, even when traveling with horses or carts. As a side effect there are nearly no springs or fountains along those roads, and since there is no water there are no villages, towns, or stores there. Sometimes you'll encounter taverns from the time when these ways were used, but they are usually closed down since the streets that brought their customers were abandoned. So, we had to take all the water we needed - and the days at early June were hot in 2021. I think each of us carried 6 liters of water, and if I remember correctly I had an additional 1.5 or 3 litres with me; additionally we had our tents, our equipment, sleeping bags, and so on - it was damn heavy. The old high street between Kocher and Jagst is one of the most forgotten among the forgotten streets. After traveling - masked - with a train to our starting point in Bad Friedrichshall we took a path up to the wine mountains behind their outdoor public bath; we talked a lot on this first part of the way. One could look far over the surrounding area, and I can distinctly remember to see a giant thistle (so large that we thought it would be a neophyte cactus first), seeing villages in the distance blurred by the hot sun - we both had gotten straw hats for protection that were constantly blown away - and talking about music, crazy concepts for things we wanted to do, stuff we had seen in the past days, a black metal concept album about towers that my friend had listened to and found so curious, and so on. We know by the sky, that we are not too high, and we know by the stars, that we are not too far. We know by the moon, that we are not to soon, and we know by the ground that we are within sound. After a few hours we reached and entered the Hardthäuser Wald - a place that, according to my sources, once was notorious for ghost tales, wolves and robbers but is now dominated by the giant wind turbines. All along were warning signs about the danger to be struck by ice shards falling of the turbines, but since the temperature was well over 25° Celsius we knew that we were safe in this regard. The cars were another question: We had to maneuver around some heavy traffic streets and a highway in this forest - seeing a giant logistic base of a big supermarket chain that sat there in the middle of nowhere like one of the cyclopean structures described by H.P. Lovecraft. But soon afterwards we could leave the big street, reentering the depths of the forest - passing an ghost tavern on the banks of a dried lake, walking unbent between trees and roaring turbines. We left the forest in the late afternoon. The street now followed a passage that was turned into a chaussee in the last century leading down (even touching some remote and lonely villages in this area) and the traffic and the boiling sun were hitting us. We had hiked together before, but I don't think that we ever did over 20 kilometers a day; and usually we had no ballast with us. We stopped at some bus stop in the middle of nowhere, drinking water, eating dates and nuts. We knew that we were closing to our days destination, an old chapel were we planned to set up our tent - but the last few kilometers (more than I had thought) took an eternity to walk, and we reached it in the early evening. The chapel was inhabited. My friend first got desperate over it, thinking that we had to set up quarter in the wood - but I asked the people living there and they were happy to see hikers on the old road, bringing even out sparkling wine and telling us some things about the place, its history, and their live. They had - in their youth - be travelers, and now worked as nature pedagogues at a close monastery. The monastery since then closed down as far as I know, and I wonder if these people are still there. The tree that we camped under was a "Dreieinigkeitslinde" (lime of the holy trinity) - three trees planted so close together that they became one over the time to symbolize the christian concepts of three entities that form one deity. Around the chapel was once a big market, not unlike the market that annually takes place in the village I grew up at since centuries; but this one shut down since a long time. In a grotto filled with statues and candles near the chapel was a spring considered holy, according to some of the - slightly dubious - sources maybe considered holy since before christian times. People came by car, getting the water that is still said to cure eye problems over the whole evening. When sleeping in our tent it was like we heard the echoes of the steps of the marketeers around us. Was it an animal, or were it plants in the wind? In my dreams shadowy, growing figures walked around our tent. On the next morning we rose early, before six o'clock. Despite the solid ground, we had slept well. The way led us into a small forest were we stumbled upon holy icons attached to trees looking through the morning fog. The way went up higher again, and we took our breakfast in the cold morning dew, eating bread and tofu looking down on a nameless village that woke up in the shine of the low sun. Later we would pass through a grove were a statue of the virgin Mary was set up in a hollow oak tree surrounded by belladonna. We encountered many shrines, some of them decorated with fresh flowers, often there were warnings written onto them ("Save your soul"). Even though the region was close to ours, it is much more catholic - and the protestants that are dominant within the religion in our former home towns removed way shrines since they refused the virign Mary nearly as much as holy oaks. Near a big road we passed a field of wild flowers. The way had constantly went up, and my friend was getting weak; I guess we had traveled over 50 kilometers till then. After passing a village called Hochholzhofen ("High wood village", but the wood was largely gone) we came to an shrine of the other kind: A small, private soldier cemetery - also decorated with flowers, but the deft stones didn't asked us to save our souls - instead they announced that the seeds that had planted in the earth here would spring up again. I'd had read about this place and I knew it had been installed by a local nazi offical who had also founded the national socialst farmers movement - some of their symbols have been picked up by the modern farmers who use them to protest against environmental protection laws. Without having concrete plans I've had some visions of demolishing the place somewhere in the remote places of my consciousness, but my friend was so tired that he asked me to let every wild stuff - he probably was afraid that I would bury myself under the nazistones when trying to throw them over (probably a futile attempt anyway, they were quite to heavy and to steadfast - and I didn't brought any material for graffiti). Later he told me that his weakness and tiredness was amplified by the creepy and dismal mood of the place, and that he just wanted to go away - almost as if the dead nazis would have grabbed out of the earth. We passed a small airport for hobbyist glider pilots, and then again meet a big street. We decided to leave the main way for some time - my friend was very tired and afraid that one of the cars (most of them were fast and drove recklessly) could hit us. He sometimes struggled to walk through exhaustion, but he is one of the most brave and headstrong people I know and refused to call and get picked up on the way. We hoped to find a better way, but nearly got lost within a forest. In the end we managed it to bypass the dangerous road and come back on our way, but it further increased the length of the walk. On early afternoon, we came to the place were the way peaked and went down to the village were the old high road met the small Jagst river; we spent nearly an hour just walking straight downwards, meeting some horned cows and an wild bull that stood behind a small fence on the way. When we arrived at the green, woody village on the running stream we sat down, phoned my parents and waited to get picked up by them and their car. The water was almost all empty, and afterwards we had aching legs for days - but it was one of the tours that I consider to be one of our great achievements when it comes to hiking; this road was - especially since it was not completely abandoned - so wild-romantic and unique as no other way I ever hiked, and I'm sure that we made around 65 km. We did many great hikes since then. Over the hills and far away. Exactly two years later I would walk another high road alone; I'll tell you about it here, but not today.