Entry 18: Ulmengrund
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Comments:
A big thank you to @TakemeThere, @Tamijo, @justforfun, @Honolulu, and @Lazarou Monkey Terror for your nice comments and your compliments! I currently can't think of any specific answer, I hope this will do.
Content:
The last weeks have been taking me to an entirely different area than I expected at first: I've been developing another part of the lowlands area that has been outlined in this sketch in Entry 8:
As already mentioned, this has been a lake about 10,000 years ago that slowly started to dry out over the years. In particular, I started with the city tile of Ulmengrund, and at the small village at the very edge of Maxiland, just to the left of the label "Ulmengrund". I should note that this took me really much time; the main reasons being a lot of MMP work again (and work is returning to me after the summer vacation), and the fact that I had to start the entire city tile with first laying out the agricultural zones because I can't develop them after growing too many houses. In fact, the whole basin here is one of the most important agricultural backbones of Maxiland. I'd like to share an intermediate picture of large parts of this area under development, as sort of a sneak peek of what is awaiting you, and also to demonstrate how I'm trying to work out my plans:
We've already seen the southern parts of this basin in the entries 9 and 10, which were dealing with the villages of Weißenfels and Erlbronn. As you can see, the northern parts has three villages, all located at one river flowing from west to east, the river Sill. I should note again that I'm going to wipe out most of the villages that have been there before 2020, when I started this CJ, but in this case, I'm going to keep the main locations of the villages.
But long story short: Let's start with the village of Hinterulmingen.
This is the main core of the village. Unlike other villages in the Feldviertel (more or less the southwestern quadrant of Maxiland), this one is pretty scattered, with a lot of small hamlets everywhere. This was the result of the fact that in the days where the first people settled there, this was more or less a wetlands area that had to be drained, and people settled where it was possible. A lot of lonewolfs built their houses somewhere at the edge of the wetlands area, where they could collect a lot of plants and mushrooms in order to survive. There's, however, still a bigger village core there, at the location of a former turf pit, where people dug for turf which could be burned for heating, or sold off. Later in time, the collection of turf was forbidden, and the pit started to fill up with water. The algae there give the water a distinctivly green hue. The turf digging activity is also the reason for the unusual design of the village - being built literally around the lake. Two pictures from different angles. Please note that north is at the top of the first picture.
And a close-up:
As already mentioned, there are a lot of small hamlets surrounding this village core. We'll start at the north and continue to the south.
If we go to the south, below the river Sill, we can have a look at the agricultural area there (even the mayor is a bit of a lonewolf, and has built his villa here):
This small hamlet here is the result of a few houses that acted as sort of trading posts, and a few other people that liked to live a bit separated. It should be noted that the river Sill is flowing through a ravine to the east (at the left of the picture), which made it impractical in earlier days to get direct access to Hinterulmingen by traveling over or along the river. Thus, there have been two older pathways into the village, and this is one of them.
And even further to the south, this is another separated forest village, nowadays acting as sort of a health resort. Two views from different angles.
I'd also like to share a few close-ups of the riverbanks of the Sill. Again, another experiment of mine where I didn't know what i was doing. As already mentioned, even this is an area that once was a lake that dried up over time. The result of this development: The entire flat parts of this area has a lot of gravel and pebble in the lower parts of the ground. Thus, the riverbanks of the Sill contain high amounts of gravel that is, however, already partly overgrown with shrubbery and a few trees.
And, to conclude this entry, a few general overview pictures.
I hope you liked this entry so far. And I hope I can write the next entry soon, because RL keeps me busy - work has started again, and I'm going to move to another apartment which costs a lot of time. Next up - I'm not sure. I already have plans for this city tile, so most likely we'll continue along the river Sill. Hope to see you again.
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