July 26, 2012
Leutershausen to Pappenheim
Two words for today: hot and flat. Well, three words: hot, flat and boring, at least part of the time. Maybe we had had enough travelling at this point and it was time to be getting home. And we almost were, only three more days of pedalling to Munich.
Before we left Leutershausen, we had a look at the intriguing monument across the street from our hotel. The sculpture was erected in honor of Gustav Weisskopf, anglicized as Gustave Whitehead, son of Leutershausen, who immigrated to the USA in 1897. Some say that he actually invented the first motorized airplane but never got credit. Whitehead claimed to have flown several times in his own powered aircraft designs in 1901 and 1902, before the Wright brothers flew in 1903. The story sounds fishy to me: Accounts from people who knew Whitehead or lived nearby were collected more than 30 years later; many of these asserted that Whitehead had flown, though some denied it. No photograph showing Whitehead making a powered flight has ever been found. He died in poverty and forgotten.
We were now on the Altmühl Valley Bike Path, one of south Germany's most popular bike paths. Around noon we were in Ornbau, a little town with a pretty bridge and some intact city wall and towers. We had a picnic in the shade of the city wall and moved on.
The path followed the bank of the Altmühl reservoir to Gunzenhausen. Here we visited our friends the storks who still live in their nest on top of the chimney of a defunct dyeing factory. At least I thought this must be the same stork family I saw on our past bicycle trips, until I did some research. I discovered in Internet that the mother stork was born in 2007 and only moved into this nest on March 2, 2012. She laid one egg. On May 30 baby stork was born. Isn't it amazing what information you can find in Internet? Both father and mother stork have rings and can be tracked. There is also a webcam on the roof pointed directly at the nest and you can watch the storks on a television screen in Restaurant Lehner which is located in the old factory. We didn't know that while we were passing through, otherwise we would have gone in.
We took a room in Pappenheim, still in the Altmühl Valley. From our room we had a close-up view of its castle.
Today's ride: 77 km (48 miles)
Total: 1,062 km (660 miles)
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