Almost a year had passed since our last Spessarter Spechtweg attempt, in the course of which Chrissi got lost and almost didn’t find his way back. We decided to give it another try, just to see where we stand (with our running form, not necessarily navigation-wise!). We started in Ettlingen to have a little warm up/cool down this time - this is part of the GPS track, and the actual Spessarter Spechtweg is lap 2 in Strava (from k 3.5 to 15.5.). It was very chilly when we started, but mercifully there was no snow. The trail was in good condition, though parts of it were frozen and a bit bumpy. We lost some time right where we started the loop, on the first climb up to Spessart (which is brutal), but managed to make up for it somewhat by speeding things up on the Graf-Rhena-Weg, which is the last 3.5 k. Nobody got lost this time and it was a lot of fun, though we didn’t see any woodpeckers (just lots of dogs).