hay bales near schläferskopf hill.
july is often loaded with weather conditions that are hot, humid and sticky and summer storms are always a very welcome change. damn, even rainy days without thunder and lightning are! on this particular day in the middle of june the sky heralded an upcoming thunder storm, but when i set out for my walk i reckoned i would still have time to take a short walk before all hell broke loose ( it wasn't that infernal - well, at least for someone who loves storms to the bottom of her heart ;P ).
and i was right. i ended my little walk right in time and reached my car just as it was starting to pour. sometimes i am quite proud of my prediction skills :P
i decided to head into the woods at the foot of schläferskopf hill, a 450 meter high lift of the taunus mountains in the northwest of wiesbaden. there's an animal park nearby - the fasanerie - that i often visit, but this time i just wanted to explore the woods around it a bit. it was a very moody hike, with a tension of a looming downpour in the air. the woods were a bit dry and clearly in need of some rain and it was like even the trees were anticipating the opening of the skies. i don't know if you ever experienced this kind of feeling, i could only describe it as electricity. and it feels so exciting.
forboding skies and scythed corn fields.
there's a certain aesthetic to these rolled hay bales that i'm always attracted to. maybe it's the way the hay is brought into a neat form and the stalks are adjoined to a little spiral, forming an intricate pattern.
perfect fern growth sprawling out.
the calm.
baby fir trees.
i encountered a freshly lumbered part of the woods. always looks a bit like a battlefield.
wooden chaos.
i also counted ant hills that day. i think i found at least 10.
a particularly big one!
it started rumbling in the far distance so i decided to not stroll any further into the woods but slowly make my way back. the path lead me to the entry of the schläferskopf water conveyance tunnels. this was shot from on top of it.
found some interesting fruit nearby - red elderberry fruits. they are toxic when eaten raw, but cooked they are edible and can be used for jelly, jams and juices. however, not everyone tolerates these. you have to remove the seeds after cooking as well, as they are still quite toxic.
the tunnel is embedded into the hill and reaches a length of about 3 kilometers. it was erected between 1875 and 1910 by the geologist carl koch. they convey 2 million cubic meter of water inside these tunnels all year round and it's one of the most productive water resources of wiesbaden.
i totally love the majestic look of those tunnel entries. by the way, there are more water conveyance tunnels in wiesbaden's vicinity - the kreuzstollen, kellerskopfstollen & münzbergstollen ( and several more conveyance tunnels in the suburbs of wiesbaden ).
when you take a closer look the facade of the tunnel entrance is captivating with a mosaic-like structure, as if they took natural stones and used clinker brick techniques to assemble them. it's so good.
the iron door looks like the entrance to a vault where valuable and precious things are stashed.
cute little golden flower embellishment.
only a few meters away you can find the kreuzstollen. in front of the facility you can find an ancient machine - i'm guessing it is some sort of hydraulic water pump. couldn't find infos on the internet. in general the kreuzstollen seems to be less worth it to write something about, even though it was build earlier than the schläferskopfstollen. ah, well. nevermind.
a closer look.
this building is also in the close neighborhood of the two conveyance tunnels and it also has a purpose to do with water: the waterworks klosterbruch. the black dressing on the building is my favourite detail. it looks like water bubbles are floating on a stream and therefore creates a link to the building and its use. it's actually a pumping station where the taunus waters are temporarily stored and is processed until it is ready for the transfer into town.( it has a very high surplus of carbonic acid, which is not bad per se, but bad for water pipelines because it slowly pyrolizes them over the years - that's why they strip off the surplus of it in this facility )
as you can see, the clouds got darker and darker and the growling of the thunderstorm drew more close! it was time to hurry up, but i still wanted some shots of this facility. it was just too good!
close-up of the dressing.
in front of the waterworks you can find this little square where you can rest for a bit. i love it! mainly because of the honeycomb wall dressing ( of course ). but the benches are also pretty cool and in general this space is so full of different textures that my brain sends all kinds of heart eyes emojis through my system. to explain why i love textures so much is a hard endeavour, and i'm not quite sure why, even! i love touching all kinds of surfaces and feeling the constistency of something. and looking at it is firing off some sort of an aesthetic stimulation process in me that i can't describe well.
if you look closely to the right you can see a tiny pipe coming out of the wall - this is actually a water outlet, a fountain. it wasn't functioning, though, and i'm not even sure if they shut it off purposefully. because nearby there is a draw well for citizens to draw water from and they shut it down a few years ago because people were vandalizing it and polluted it. my guess is, that when they shut down that well, they also closed the tap for this little fountain. a little bit sad, especially when you consider that this should be a little place of respite after a long hike or walk. wouldn't it be nice to listen to the water dripping down into the stonebed ( i'm assuming it's a percolation well ) and maybe seeing some green plants grow instead of the yellow growth on it?
good stufffffffff. all these colour variations!
making my way back through the woods to head home. it still didn't rain, but i had the feeling that the downpour wasn't that far off anymore.
one quick shot of some mossy trees.
and of the stormy sky. this was the last picture because then it started to rain - just in time as i reached my car. i stayed for a bit to wait out the most severe downpour, and after enjoying some lightnings and listening in to the thunder and rain, i made my way back home! thunderstorms are so thrilling and make me vibrate internally on a electrifying level that i love very much.
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