The starting point for this tour is an outdoor swimming pool - which sounds pretty cool, until you arrive. It is located under a huge Autobahn bridge and looks like a good spot to get rid off a body or meet your local heroin dealer. Definitely not the most scenic spot in Karlsruhe! Anyway, we met Volker on a mild but rainy Sunday morning and set off for the Grenzweg.
We left the bridge behind, heading into the woods, where we instantly got lost (story of my life), but retraced our steps and found the trail again. Volker then switched on his voice navigation, which spared us a few other navigation cock-ups. The path at first is pretty steep and was not very runnable, as it had rained the night before and the ground was very muddy and slippery. Steffi and Volker had chosen to wear road running shoes because most of the tour was on paved roads, whereas Chrissi had gone for his trusty trail shoes, which proved to be the better choice (and might have been the reason why he sped up the hills). It was a fun run and and a varied route, with very nice views of the Bergdörfer and of some lush valleys. There weren’t many people around, and we mostly had the trails to ourselves. It cleared after an hour or so, and the sun came out, which was very nice.
I think the direction we chose (running into the woods from the bridge in the direction of Ettlingen) is the better one, as it’s probably a bit easier to run this way.