Daun Valley Path B6

This circular hike begins in Buchen city center, specifically at Joseph-Martin-Kraus Square. Our path leads along the Morre through the Buchen school center and after the railway underpass on the right valley side through the Hettingen valley to the "Hasenwäldchen". Here you will find a forest and bird nature trail, a playground, a restaurant, aviaries, and animal enclosures. We leave Hettingen behind and go right through the Daun Valley past the Daun pond.

After crossing the road toward Eberstadt, you reach the Hollerstocksiedlung. In the "Breitenbüschle" forest area, you find a square earth embankment - the Hettingen "Huenengrab". This is the earliest discovered find in the Hettingen area, dated to around 600 BC. It is a megalithic tomb (barrow), opened and investigated in 1894 by Professor Schumacher. The tomb contained fragments of clay vessels as well as bronze and iron remains from tools, weapons, and jewelry.

After this historic sight, you cross a busy country road from where you can already see the settlement at Weidenbaum. From there, continue past an orchard to the Buchen watchtower on the Wartberg (394 m above sea level). According to an inscription, built or renewed in 1490, it served as an observation tower to warn the inhabitants of the heavily fortified medieval town of approaching enemy troops during wartime. The oldest depiction from 1593 shows the tower, then still with a hipped roof, standing completely free to give observers an unobstructed view in all directions. The approximately 14 m high tower consists of a five-meter-high circular base with a five-meter diameter and a nine-meter-high but only 4.40 m thick upper structure. At the height of the offset is the originally pointed-arch entrance, which could only be reached by a ladder pulled up during enemy attacks. Above the entrance, the year 1490 with a stonemason's mark is diagonally affixed to a stone block. Also, well preserved there is a pouring hatch (also called "Pechnase"), used to defend against enemy intruders.

From the tower’s platform, there is a unique, magnificent panoramic view of two landscapes, quite different in some details, whose boundary runs roughly north-south: to the east, the Bau (farmland), and to the west, the Odenwald forest. The difference in landscape formation is due to geological formations: Muschelkalk with its yellow soils in the east and Buntsandstein with high forest coverage in the west. The view of Buchen shows the medieval small town within the city wall at the beginning of the Morre valley, and its expansions roughly dating back to the beginning of industrialization.
- Please check at the Tourist Information before your hike whether the tower is open. -

Follow the well-maintained path down from the watchtower back to Buchen.