Romantische Strasse (part two)

Half way down the Romantic Road at Donnauworth, we realised that we had time to visit some friends we met on our 2007 Danube trip, who live at Bergenweiler, just off the Danube bike path. It was great to have the opportunity to cover some of the same ground, and we found we could even remember some of the places that we'd visited before.

Our friends gave us a great welcome, and made us feel at home, with the Aussie Flag flying when we got there.

We had a traditional dish, schupfnudeln mit kraut for dinner, which was delicious, then afterwards had a nice chat outside in front of a beech wood fire, sampling some wines from their cellar.
Next day, they took us to see the Steiff stuffed animals museum, which Hannelore loved, and I found ...interesting.

In the afternoon, we visited a cave, "Charlotten Hohle" which is 500 metres long, and took an hour or so for the guided tour.
In a trip full of highlights, for me, this visit to our cycling friends topped the list.

Back to the Kanu Club in Donnauworth next day, and continuing the tour, we went to Augsburg the day after that.
Augsburg is a very big Bavarian City, where Hannelore was in hospital after her 2008 accident. She didn't have a chance to visit it then, so we gave it a thorough visit this time, and spent a day and a half there.

Perlacturm, Augsburg

We went to the Zoo, went up the Perlachturm, visited the Dom and St Ulrichs, and the Market, amongst other places of interest. Like many big German Cities, Augsburg was heavily bombed in World War II, (I think it had the Messerschmitt factory), but has been rebuilt since.



 From Augsburg we went to Landsberg, (smaller, some spectacular scenery on the Lech River), then across to Utting am Ammersee, simply because of the name.

Uttingstroke being performed by its inventor, Utting at Utting

 We've been there before for an afternoon, but this time had a day off there as well, and visited by boat, Herrsching, on the other side, and Andechs, a beer brewing monastery where we sampled, in a wimpish 1/2 litre way, their product (Bavarians drink full litres). I also managed a swim at Utting, and put in a good number of metres of "Utting Stroke".

mv Augsburg, our ship on the Ammersee

Next day we came away from Utting, to Altenstadt, to visit Barbara, who helped us greatly when Hannelore had her accident. On the way, we passed the accident site, and took an appropriate victory picture.

Hannelore at her accident site

Barbara gave us a big welcome, and we stayed with her for two nights, visiting nearby Schongau, a town on the Romantic Road that we are fairly familiar with. We like it because it has a lot of tourist type points of interest, and not many tourists.
Next point for us, down the Romantic Road, was Wieskirche, the "church in a field", which is a UNESCO world heritage site.

Wieskirche near Steingarten

The same day, we carried on to Schwangau, where we camped at the most expensive (22 euros) and worst camping area we have experienced so far. Practically head to toe with our fellow tent tourists, our night was as expected, a lot of uninteresting discussion from our various neighbours, and when they did go to sleep,their snoring eclipsed mine.

Schlosse Neuschwanstein

Next day, we packed up quickly and left, to visit the famous Neuschwanstein castle, built by Ludwig II. Started in 1869, and never quite finished,it is never the less a wonderful piece of work, and attracts thousands of tourists each day. Afterwards, we experienced an amazing thunderstorm while we were at a hotel having a beer, which prompted us to find a Gasthause in the town, and as soon as we had installed ourselves there, an even more severe one happened.
Today, we visited Fussen, the last town on the Romantic Road, then came back to our friend Barbara's place at Altenstadt near Schongau.
That's it, all over, apart from travelling to Munich, which we'll also do by bicycle, and catching the 'plane home on the 18th of July. We've had a great trip, cycled over 2000 kilometers, no injuries, and only one puncture!

The Romantische Strasse (Romantic Road)

Wurzburg was really worth a look, and we gave it a good shot, with a day off.

Wurzburg from the Fortress on the hill above

We saw just about everything it had to offer, to mention a few, the Dom St Killian (sounds Irish - yes he brought Catholicism from Ireland and paid for it with his life). There seem to be a lot of St Killian churches in this part of Germany.
We had a guided tour of the Residenz, the bishops palace in the city, and then later went up to his palace on the hill, the Marienburg. Dodging rain the whole time, what stars.

Next day, we pulled out of our nice camping area, at the Kanu club, and started our trip down the Romantic Road (Romantische Strasse). This is 480k from Wurzburg to Fussen, near Schwangau in the south, where Mad King Ludwig built his famous fairy tale castle.

Romantic Road - Forest, Crops, Towns

There are some steep rises coming out of the Main River Valley, one was 16 percent, but,the little Bike Fridays struggled up it, OK.
We stayed that night in a ferienwohnung,(holiday flat),at Tauberbischoffsheim, cost just 20 euros each,we could cook and it had a sitting room. Honestly, the cheaper they are, the better they get!
We did a thorough rubberneck of the town, which has all the quaint usual things, like half timbered houses, Schloss, Churches and a Ratthouse. We even toured a very good museum,which was in the Schloss, and Hannelore says I don't have to go to a museum again, this trip.
At the breakfast next day, Hannelore had a nice conversation with a German couple, whilst I looked and grinned foolishly and nodded occasionally, which is my role.  
The towns in this region are generally beautiful, and well kept, but we got into this smaller one by mistake:

We'd ridden up a steep rise of three or four kilometers to get to Struth, then realised it wasn't on our route, and had to do the ride of shame back down, (with more than "struth" on my lips).  This was our first lesson that following the signs without looking at the guide book doesn't work on the Romantische Strasse, there are a lot of other routes here, and so many arrows you can easily get confused. Also, some of the signs have been vandalised, and some missing.
I started this blog from Donnauworth, on the Danube, half way down the Romantic Road, and it is also on the Danube bike route that we came down in 2007.  All the major towns down this section deserve a picture and a mention, but there isn't time or space. 
Rothenburg was one place where we were fortunate to see not only wonderful buildings, but witnessed a parade, on another holiday long weekend, of course.

The parade went on for half an hour or so, a long stream of colourful costumes and "oompah" bands.


Another town we liked a lot was Nordlingen, which is built in the centre of a crater formed by a meteorite 50 million years ago:

Nordlingen, from the Church Tower ("The Daniel")

The far dark line of trees is the edge of the crater, and the tower with it's 359 steps is right in the centre of the town.
Thats it, moving on now, for the next half of the "Romantic Road".

Koblenz to Wurzburg Along The Rivers Rhein and Main

We left Koblenz, and it was as easy getting out as it was getting in, along the Rhein, nice signposting, all very easy.

We bought the correct Bikeline guide for this, but it wasn't really necessary, we were a bit surprised that there was only about 100k to do for this section of the trip. However, we thought that there was a good chance we'd be back. or someone could borrow the guide later.

We found the Rhein very different from the Moselle, it is a lot wider, has beaches, not just river and a bank, the Danube is like the Moselle in that respect.

There are very few vines up the mountain sides by comparison, sometimes they are on the flats which are probably the Rhein's flood plain. The Rhein flows much more swiftly than the Moselle, and the barges sometimes can barely make way against the current.

Although the Moselle had some castles, the Rhein seems to have one on every bend.

The first day we passed through Boppard, St Goar and the Loreley, and ended up at a beautiful little town called Oberwesel, and got the last tent site in the camping area there. The lack of accommodation was due to the long weekend, Pfingston, (possibly birth of the Catholic Church?), the Rhein area and probably every tourist area in Germany was chock full of people.

Next morning, we went up to Oberwesel's castle, (Schonburg) a ride and a climb by foot, before breakfast, and felt very good about ourselves.

The German trains always seem to us like model train sets, and this one pictured across the Rhein from our camp at Oberwesel, is a very good example.

We had already toured this area in 1995 with our children (except Vic), and Bacharach, where we stayed in a youth hostel with them then, was our next stop, just 6k away, so we climbed up to that castle as well, (Burgh Stahlek), for old times sake. Two castles in one day, not bad.

looking North from Burg Stahlech along the Rhein

looking South

Further along, the Radweg (bike path) became stony dirt, and extremely crowded, so we travelled much slower, and finally pulled up at a camp called Hattenheim, 15k short of Mainz. We'd planned to be a bit closer, but we were pretty tired, even though we'd only done  45k. We had one of those unfortunate nights that you get sometimes when camping, especially on long weekends, a party until 3am, next door, yakking, laughing, clapping, drunk talk. Nothing you can do but put up with it. I woke them up next morning though, on the way out!

We didn't get to Mainz until 3pm next day, because we had to stop in and see a couple of very nice places along the way, Eltville and Biebrich, which both have burgs, and needed a look. We found Mainz a very nice town too, but a trip in during the afternoon was enough for us to get the idea, and we thought we wouldn't stay another day, as we'd originally planned.

Hannelore in Mainz town square

We met another couple of Perth bicycle tourists in the Mainz camping area, Dave and Louise, who are doing three months there, Holland and north Germany, having a whale of a time, and a very nice couple.

So, the end of our Rhein experience, on to the River Main, as far as Wurzburg, about half way along the Main Radweg.

The Main River

The Main, of course, is much smaller than the Rhein, and a little smaller than Moselle, too, I think. It has some vines along the valley sides, but is mostly natural forest where there is not farmlands or towns.

Our first view of the Main where it meets the Rhein

 From a bike riding point of view, the path changed from one that was sometimes pitted and unsealed, to mostly smooth, and mostly dedicated to bike travel alone. The wind was in the right quarter quite often too, so we were able to cycle at low to mid 20kph quite often.
The ease of riding didn't seem to change the distances we've been doing, which still seems to be about 50k per day, which feels about right for us.

Market Square, Frankfurt

Frankfurt, our first stop along the Main, was a surprise. We thought it would be just a big city, with cars tearing around everywhere, but they have a lot of public open space, and you can just ride your bike everywhere without fear of being knocked over. The fast cars seem to be limited to certain areas, people can walk through malls and squares, which are all over the place, and if a car is going through them, it seems to be a rarity. Perhaps they have some rule that makes it that way after hours, I don't know, but it is very civilised.

All along the river are typical German towns, with beautiful old half-timbered buildings. This picture is from a town called Seligenstadt, pretty close to Frankfurt.

 By far the biggest buildings though, are those that belonged to the Bishops of the old times, who were actually Ruler/Barons (my understanding), who levied heavy taxes to pay for the monstrosities. Here's an example, the Schloss Johannisburg at Aschaffenburg.

Schloss Johannisburg

It's rained a lot on this section of the ride, but it hasn't bothered us too much, we've been often finished for the day by the time it starts, or inside touring some wonderful building. Sometimes it's an excuse to stop and have a cup of coffee (or a beer).
We had a day off at Wertheim, dodging rain most of the time, and also took a ride down the Tauber bike path. The Tauber is a smaller river, with another very nice path, with beautiful scenery. It's hillier than the others, and we will encounter it again when we get to the Romantische Strasse.

the River Main at Wertheim

The River Tauber at Wertheim

We finally reached Wurzburg, on 21st of June. This is a very big town, chock full of tourism opportunities, so we're having a day off here too.

The Marienberg Fortress, Wurzburg

This is where we begin the next part of the trip, down the Romantische Strasse, to Fussen, thence to Munich and home.

The Moselle

Leaving Metz was as tricky as arriving, but eventually, we made our way out, and found ourselves on a brand new cycle path along the Moselle, in fact, too new to be in our guide book.
Mid morning, we came upon a Dutch couple, who were riding home after a month's cycling holiday in the south of France and Italy. They invited us for a cup of coffee, and taught us quite a bit about cycle touring, one thing we implemented at the next supermarket, was the coffee, being nescafe sachets of cappuccino, which we find are simple and superior to French coffee at cafes, which just isnt't to our tastes.

Hannelore downs a proseco cocktail

 
That afternoon, we came to the hill top town of Pels, and found a guest house below the hill, run by a peculiar little chap with a knotted beard. After a check with his “cleaning lady”, (obviously his wife), he led us up to what he called a “suite”, that had a  “60's theme”, which looked pretty good to us, we wouldn't have cared if it was the insides of a walrus's gut, the state we were in (70k's into a headwind). He said it was 70 euros, and did we still want it, and although it was overpriced, we would have paid 100 if he'd asked. His 60's theme was just that, quite well done, with everywhere you looked, some strange item, or something of that era. Today was our 34th wedding anniversary, thats the reason we were not in the tent.
Travelling up the Moselle, is mostly flat, with the occasional undulation. We are on quiet roads, or sealed cycle paths, very occasionally unsealed, but properly made tracks.

typical moselle signs

They are nicely sign posted, so it's difficult to get off the track, but I always have Hannelore beside or behind me to let me know when I do.
The setting is absolutely beautiful, sometimes we're riding between the vines, sometimes next to the river, but wherever your eye turns, there's green, so different from Australia,and wherever you point the camera, you're taking roughly the same picture.
One Tourist highlight was Trier, where we had a day off (pretty hard work), to look at the "2000 steps takes you over 2000 years" sights, such as the impressive Porta Nigra, and the Amphitheatre. 

Porta Nigra, Trier

Amphitheatre

Others were BernKastel-Kues, Zell, and Cochem, all very pretty but highly tourist oriented,as I suppose they have a right to be.

Cochem Castle, Cochem

Closer to the Castle

 






















Presently we're in Koblenz, at the end of the Moselle trip, and starting the Rhein section. This is another beautiful city as well, and we've taken another day off to have a look around here.

Deutsche Eck, Koblenz

The Deutsche Eck (Google it, it's something like that, I'm trying to do this without glasses), is where the Moselle empties into the Rhein, so, for us, it's goodbye to the Moselle, and hello to the Rhein.

Eparnay to Metz

Metz  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metz is the actual start of our bike ride, or the "planned" bit, meaning the part I originally bought guides for.

Since then, we've ridden from Paris, 200k to Epernay, and a further 60 in a tour there. As I write this, at Lac de Madine,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac_de_Madine, we've done a further 208k.

Anyway, it was with regret, that we packed up and left our lovely Chambre d'Hote, and our nice hosts at Epernay.

Once we were out of the town, we found that there was a canal, running right next to the Marne, which was called, not surprisingly, le canal par la Marne, or some such. 

smooth

The path started out smooth, but gradually deteriorated, and eventually we were riding along a bit of a bush track, but later, as we got closer to Challon-en-Champagne, it returned to its brilliant smoothness.

Unfortunately, at about the same time, Hannelore's chain broke. A nice French couple on a tandem happened by, and stopped to help, and the chap offered me a link to fix it. That was a little different to my fix, which was by using a special link one uses so that the chain can be pulled apart for cleaning, but I was carrying it just in case the chain broke.

rough, gets rougher

However, I went along with his idea, until I managed to lose his spare, which he offered me, in the long grass, where it pinged off  the pliers. So, I went ahead with my original plan, and Hannelore's bike was soon up and running again.

We had a nice “Pigeon French” chat with the couple, before continuing on to our next camping site, at Chalons-sur-Marne, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalons_Sur_Marne which was shorter than our original planned destination, but we felt like stopping after the excitement of the broken chain.

There was a Dutch couple at the camping, with high quality everything, tent, bikes, and in particular, a wonderful camping seat, which he said weighed 75grams, and packed into a case the size of my toilet bag. I had a go at sitting in it, ingeniously it has a back rest, although you have to balance the whole thing as you sit, because it has only two legs.

Nice little Marne Canal boat

The couple were going on to Santiago in Spain, doing a pilgrimage by bicycle, as was the young fellow camped across the way from us. We have met others doing the same thing since, long distances, from our point of view, 80 to 100k per day, we only do half that. I guess the ordeal is part of the thing. They were packed up and gone, long before us, next morning.

us on the Marne Canal

We went on to Vitry-le-Francois, which is quite a big town, and reputed to have a camping area, but, when we got there, a Royal Show type event, complete with sideshow alley, was happening, next door to where the camping was supposed to be, and the camping area itself, which looked terrific, was closed and empty. How typically French, we thought, as we cycled off to find somewhere else to stay.

That turned out to be the Hotel de la Poste, which is one of the Logie de France group, a little up market for me, at 80 euros with breakfast, but we were glad to have somewhere to stay. We had dinner at a nearby restaurant, Hannelore a seafood pizza, and I, a Bretonne salad, which was basically lettuce topped with smoked salmon and sprinkled with mayonnaise.

This is quite a big town, has a huge square, and a couple of monster churches, but you won't find much on the internet about it, not with a quick search, at any rate.

Next day, after some more canal riding, and some D road riding, we made Bar-le-Duc,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar-le-Duc another large town, where we arrived at 3:15, and found that the camping area was closed until  4pm. So, we went to a bar down by one of the many churches, and had a beer! 

I had a red Irish one, which was delicious, Hannelore had a Blonde, which was OK too. After downing them, and Hannelore visiting the church, we went back to the camping, where a multilingual older chap, with stumpy teeth, a dog, and a cat, checked us in. It was the cheapest so far, 8.50 euros, but we had to pay a 20 euro deposit for the gate/toilet key.

After setting up the tent, we went to the Mandarin Chinese restaurant, where I managed a truly vegan dinner, for a change.

I had planned a route to go further south, and meet the Moselle, but I didn't have the correct map, and we were about to go back into the town and buy one, when the camp commandant gave us a free one, with a nice short cut that would potentially get us to Metz quicker. 

Me during the ride to Lac de Madine

It wasn't long before we realised that it was going to be a fairly arduous short cut, the first hill we came to, after only a couple of kilometres, was a “granny gear” one. We did 58k, nothing stupendous, we are usually reasonably fresh after such a run, but we were both worn out, when we came to our camp at Lac de Madine  from where I am typing this. That's because, it rained during the night, and it was still coming down in the morning. Better to be warm and dry than cold and wet we thought, so here we are, for another day.

Well, we made it to Metz, following the Vallee du Rupt de Mad, don't ask me what it means, apart from it is the Mad River valley, and quite beautiful, even though the weather is still not perfect, cold, windy, and overcast. There was quite a climb first up, but afterwards, fairly gentle ups and downs, and if the wind hadn't been right in our faces, we'd probably have not even noticed the hills.
 

Vallee du Rupt de Mad

We had a pretty terrible time finding our way into Metz through a myriad of huge roundabouts, which led to service areas and shopping centres, also to the huge inter-European A31, which I was sure I was going to get sucked into. But, somehow we made it, me riding in front, and Hannelore screaming instructions at me, from behind. I respect her intuition!
We're going to have a lay day, and explore Metz tomorrow, it is a gem of history, and our occasional glimpses through the traffic so far have suggested this is so.

Paris to Eparnay, and around the Champagne District

Paris to Epernay
We took one of the specially marked bike routes out of Paris, intending to reach the Canal de L'Ourcq, which I'd researched as a clear run to Claye-Souilly, about 30k to the east. Unfortunately, we took a right turn at the canal, instead of a left, and didn't discover the error until we saw a sign saying "Bastille this way".
We recovered from that, a five kilometer ride in the wrong direction, means an extra 10 overall, but I've certainly made worse errors.

The canal is a dream run, no traffic, just lots of other bike riders, fishermen,and the odd graffiti artist. You're totally off any roads, and the path is mostly dirt,grading from rough to smooth, but sometimes asphalt.
We emerged once at a town called Villeparisis, because we'd run out of water, then continued on to our destination, Claye-Souilly, where we found a hotel from a chain called "Fast Hotels", which was pretty poor, unfortunately, but cheap.
In the evening, we rode our bikes a couple of K's to the restaurant area, and had dinner at a beaut little inexpensive restaurant, with lovely food and staff.
Next day, we continued along the canal, and reached Villenoy, where we had lunch, then on to Meaux, which is quite a large town, with a spectacular looking church.

Meaux is on the Marne, and after quite a long discussion, we decided we'd follow the river, to get to Trilport, since we'd got such good use out of waterside paths up to date. However, it turned out to be a very convoluted track, with a lot of forks, and were soon lost, but a couple of bicycle mounted police came and escorted us through the forest, and we ended up back on the canal de L'Ourcq, although it reads as the Marne on our map.
The friendly gendarmes (one a woman), directed us to Trilport from there, and we ended up at the camp ground.
We had an entertaining time talking to the manager, he spoke no English, but pigeon French did the trick, as it has done throughout this trip so far. Somehow, I've had the impression previously that many French were OK at English, but it hasn't been so this time.
We had quite a good night for our first camp, soft grass, nice shower. This shower was the kind that you press, and get only about 10 seconds, then you have to press it again. There was no adjustment, you just get the temperature that whoever sets it up thinks is right.
Next day, we bought a quiche for breakfast, and a "sandwich" for lunch. The "sandwich" is a baguette, this one ham and salad, which was the nearest I could get for vegan, the other choice at that boulangerie was ham and cheese! So, it looks like the diet is a write off on this trip.
We set out on the D603, which is marked red on our map, but got off that as soon as possible, because it was quite busy. We felt safe, but the noise makes it unpleasant. Our map has three colours of roads that are usable, the other two are yellow D roads, and C roads which are in white. There are also N and A roads, which are too busy to contemplate.
We spent the night at Chateau Thierry, in a motor home camping site. The machine that controlled the site would not let us in, because we only had a tent, but one of the other tenants there took pity on us and gave us the code for the showers and toilet.

Next day, to Eparnay, was much the same, 60k of glorious views, and we're staying in a beautiful Chambre d'Hote,owned by an ex Vigneron, who must be a terrific chap, because he gave us a free bottle of champagne from his vineyard.
We've done 200k since leaving Paris.
Around Epernay
We did a 60k ride on Wednesday, a ride recommended by our French cycling book, which had the usual wonderful vineyard views, but also graded into an area much like our south west, with cattle and grains. We stopped off at our host's son's champagne house, where we bought one of his bottles, which we sampled later, very nice. He also runs a Museum of Marriage, which we were going to visit, but since we got there at 11:50, and they shut for two hours from midday for lunch (normal here), we couldn't go in.

Today (Thursday), we went for a visit to the Moet-Chandon champagne house. There wasn't a lot we didn't know about the process, but it was interesting to visit the caves beneath the main street (there are kilometers of them), and appreciate the volume of the bottles stored there. We did learn that Moet is pronounced like that, not "Moey", as we do in Australia. I tried to dampen down Hannelore's enthusiasm as much as possible, but she kept saying things like "I'll never feel guilty about buying it again", which I didn't understand.
We did trip preparation after that, for the journey to Metz, 280k, not a minor undertaking. Things like bike repair, washing, finding hardware shops, etc.
At the end of the day, our host brought us some ratafia, a grape juice and grape alcohol mixture, and also some biscuits and cherry tart, that he'd made. We ate and drank with enthusiasm, and had one of our nice pigeon french conversations with him. We also finished off our champagne from the day before, then went downtown for dinner, where we had pizza, and a half bottle of pinot noir. Well, we have to keep our strength up for tomorrow's efforts.

Paris

The flight went well.
After Liz dropped us off at the airport, we went to the pub where Hannelore watched me drink a morale boosting glass of red wine, then in we went. I was frisked twice, first for explosives, then for anything else, but I was pleased they're taking security seriously.
The Boeing 777 to Dubai was OK, but pretty cramped, my knees started to hurt half way through, and I was wondering if I had a DVT. I had two vego meals, the first quite reasonable, the second one was quite good, and I watched three movies. I might have dozed a bit, too.

We had the Airbus A380 to Paris, what a wonderful aircraft, I almost felt safe and confident. No sore knees, either, it's much more comfortable, as it has that extra bit of leg room.

We easily got through customs at Charles De Gaulle airport, and finding a taxi was a breeze, so that we beat Jon and Grace to our apartment. We expected them to be there first, but they had to spend quite a bit of time finding their way through the Metro with all their gear.
Since then we've done the usual Paris stuff, Sacre Coeur, expensive restaurants, Eiffel Tower,

Seine boat ride, etc etc. We're enjoying this nice little apartment, which is furnished in a quirky fashion, things like:

a duck smoking a pipe, and a larger than life cut out of a naked lady in the toilet, which I haven't quite got used to yet
I don't know how often I'll get to post a blog as we go, but please, let me know if you don't want to receive it, I won't be offended if you want to opt out. Everyone has plenty of emails to read, I know, and I'll understand if you don't want more.