Sternallee - Hockenheimring - Sternallee

Our run deep into the Schwetzinger Hardt forest area offers an interesting insight into a cultural landscape that has been used by humans for centuries. "Hardt" is an old Germanic word for forest pasture and stands for the use of the Hardt forests as a source of timber and firewood, as pasture for livestock and even for the cultivation of potatoes and buckwheat in times of need.

On our way south, we cross the Hardtbach stream after about 3.7 km. It divides the Schwetzinger Hardt into a Untere Hardt (in the north) and Obere Hardt (in the south). When we reach the edge of the forest, we turn east and pass the Hardt community of Hockenheim and, halfway along the trail, the Hockenheimring, which was initially built in 1932 as an approximately 12 km long triangular course on unpaved paths in the Hardt forest.

Attentive observers will not fail to notice that the Schwetzinger Hardt, as a Regional Forest Preserve designated by the Freiburg Regional Council, is divided into different zones. In the protected forest, nature has absolute priority; humans no longer intervene. In the protected forests, the preservation, maintenance and development of the sparse pine forests and open sand grass communities are in the foreground, and in the recreational forest, recreational use is reconciled with the special concerns of nature conservation and forestry.

On the long straight stretch of the Fuhrmannsweg, we cross the Hardtbach stream for the second time on our way back north, change from the protected forest to the recreational forest, leave the forest and pass the Hardtwald settlement, which belongs to Oftersheim, and return first across the fields and then along Sternallee to the starting point.