I just measured on a map that I hiked 22.5 km in 5:30 hours today. And I took 723 photos (yes, I’m totally insane; for your viewing pleasure I reduced them to only 96), which resulted in a lot of stops and a bunch of wasted time. I reckon I haven’t done this trip often enough, because I took the wrong turn-off – twice, on the way there and back – which cost me several extra kilometers. Well, I was just enjoying myself in nature, so that wasn’t bad at all. It just meant that I wouldn’t be home before dark. And that’s totally fine with me. Maybe next time I care to remember to walk the more direct route. We’ll see.

The golden autumn is so fricking beautiful. It only rained in the morning, so I left right after lunch. We then had a good mix of clouds and sunshine. At the beginning, the sun was out for at most 10 seconds in a row before the next cloud covered it up again. My camera takes longer than that to boot, so I missed a ton of opportunities. But judging by the number of photos, it didn’t hurt at all.

9 and 10 is a common kestral. I could figure that out based on another photo which had good colors but was very blurry. Unfortuntately, the deer in 30-32 were too far away. A few hundred meters I’d say. I had to think of Rapunzel in 84-86. :-)

After dawn and one and a half completely drained batteries I walked past a bunch of trees and wondered what kind of birds were sitting on them. They didn’t look like ravens or something similar. Suddenly, 20-30 red kites flew up (their V-shaped tails made it crystal clear). I have never seen so many of them in a flock. Not even close. That was super cool to watch. Much later after dark I also saw a bat flying over my head. Nice way to end this trip.