Ride to Dasing on 25 April 2010

Written on 26 April 2010

It was already 11 o'clock before we climbed into our saddles. The sun shone brightly, and there was a warm, dry feeling to the breeze that promised good weather. "We" means my wife Heike and me. Our horses are: a five year old American Quarter Horse gelding by the name of GB Bond, and a six year old Haflinger gelding from Kitzbuehel called Nicco. The plan was to ride from our fields in Gersthofen to the Fred Rai Western City in Dasing some fifteen kilometres eastwards, and back. This was our first ride without a detailed map where I had to rely upon my compass, and hope for an occasional sign-post, and, as such, was part of our preparations for a treck to Stuttgart and back at the end of May. A ten day tour of about perhaps three hundred and fifty kilometres.

Although Gersthofen and Augsburg lie in the middle of beautiful Bavaria, Germany, reaching suitable riding paths is a matter of patience and a good hour or so of walking over stony paths, crossing one or two main roads, or even riding through the busy town centre of Gersthofen.
Today though, we reached the Derchinger Forest in good time and good spirits. We left the beaten tracks as soon as possible, preferring the rarely used, rough, and often steep tracks used normally only by loggers. Gradually the sun warmed to about twenty degrees Celsius although we only felt the warmth when riding across open areas. In the deeper parts of the forest there pervaded a comfortable coolness and a subdued, green sunlight filtered by the pine trees. Heike commented, "It looks like a fairy tale forest," and I had to agree. Later, as we approached Dasing, we had to leave the forest for the open fields, and it became hot. We had not seen water for a couple of hours and the horses were becoming thirsty.

Nevertheless, I decided to push on as we only had a few more kilometres to go before reaching the Western City where we would ask for water.
We rode through Bitzenhofen which we found very pleasant. The houses and farms here are very well kept with pretty gardens sporting a stunning variety of colours. Suddenly, the road took a sharp right turn and led off to the nearby motorway and away from Dasing. We found a track going in the right direction again but it was cut off by railway lines and a crossing point with barriers which we couldn't bypass. I called the operator on the intercom provided and we heard something like, "... coming." We didn't understand so we waited ... and waited. Eventually we became tired of waiting and rode off to find another way. At which point a train went through the crossing and the barriers were lifted. Not knowing if they would close again automatically, we galloped back to cross over ourselves ...,

and the horses refused to cross the lines. There we stood, almost on top of the rails and between the barriers, which I half expected to close again and trap us. Heike quickly dismounted and led Nicco across closely followed by GB. Half an hour later we arrived at the Western City where very friendly people took us in and fetched water for us. Whilst there we were able to watch the preparations for, and proceedings of, the latest Fred Rai show with an interesting bunch of red-indians running to and fro. We wondered how the horses would react to gunshots. After saying a big, "Thank you," and saying our our farewells, we started off on the return ride when behind us a canon was fired. It shook the air and it shook the ground, but not the horses, so we needn't have worried. Three hours later we arrived home. We had been out for six hours and covered about thirty kilometres or so. We had found some great paths and met some very friendly people, and had great weather. That's how a weekend should be.

last updated on 29 April 2010