Day 17: Kleinostheim to Burgstadt

May 16, 2014

We changed our mind about where we ended up last night three times. Anyone paying attention might find that confusing, but they would be no more confused than us. This usually happens, if it's a matter of a wld camp in the middle of "nowhere".

The view from our hidey hole camping last night

Feeling in the middle of nowhere is accentuated for me, since right now I only have a general map of half of Germany in front of me. Dodie has the detail map, but in its own way that is also uninformative. The best for feeling you know where you are is a regional map. Tourist informations are often good at having that kind of map, but good tourist informations have been a bit rare lately.

Not helping much are a series of trailside panels, the result of some EU initiaive, explaining in great detail (and in German usually) about fine points of where we are. So for example they note that children could swim at a certain point in a tribuary river, due to the mouth being moved for (some reason). River .. what river?

When we came to the first of these panels, I did my usual when faced with a flood of German text - scan it desperately, looking for anything recognizable. Dodie looked at it and said Äh, there was a bridge here with nine arches. It got destroyed and a railway bridge was rebuilt. That meant workers at that new factory across the river had to commute by ferrry. The ferry ran 24/7, until a pedestrian way was added to the bridge." Say what? You figured out all that?? No, dodie had used a different trick - scan the panel for the little British flag, designating a tiny English precis of the whole story. Brilliant!

One thing I could see on my map was Aschaffenburg - the major town we pass before Wurzburg. The town has a schloss and and a monastery and in principle an altstadt and pedestrian street. We are sitting now at the requisite bakery in front of the monastry. On our right is the rathaus, so all should be well as this is the standard and desired situation. Unfortunately there are some glitches. The rathaus is a new, square, ugly building. Cars are allowed to chug through the square. Half theother buildings, including this bakery, are new and ugly. (More whining later.. gotta go.)

The "potato" restaurant in Aschaffenburg

The church shares the square with this ugly new city hall

Only dogs are absolutely barred from entering the bakery, but we decided we should keep me out of them as much as possible, to save money. This despite me being the hero for buying too much and then staving off starvation with it the other day.

The view from our bakery table in Aschaffenburg

The pedestrian shopping area. Clearly most buildings are post war.

As we crossed the river, leaving Aschaffenberg, we got a nice view back to the schloss and down the river, reinforcing that even when things are not quite perfect here, they are still grand.

A nice view of the schloss in Aschaffenburg

Every day we look at the other users of the bike path and try to figure out what they are all about. It has long been clear that long distance cyclists with tents are rare, and that the majority, while on multi-day trips, are hopping (quite lightly loaded) from guesthouse to guesthouse. One fellow today though stopped to talk. He had come from his house, about 14 km downriver and was heading for a restaurant about 26 km further on. He was surprised to learn that we were doing only about 70km per day, because this day he would travel 80 km just to go for lunch. What we found significant about this was not that there is someone on the path that is both older and faster than us, but that there is this lifestyle that comes from living on a path like this. This man can hop on his bike and travel in complete safety and silence, basically for free, to any one of a number of great destinations for the day. It reminds us of the similar situation of our friend Michel Fleurance, along the Loire near Nantes. Maybe one day the trail from our house to Victoria will be completed and we can do the same as these two. Only thing, there is also a giant hill between us and all those restaurants. Oh well.

These are the typical roof tiles used throughout Germany. They are super durable and nice, and go well with houses that are all built to last. We do not know the cost, though.

A rider passing us with an ëxtreme" recumbent. These seem awkward to us, unlike recumbent trikes.

Two riders passing from the other way. We like to try assessing what each group is up to. One time five men passed and in fifteen minutes five women. Naturally our thoughts turned to match making!

High water marker in Worth. High water is a big topic along many rivers here.

This tower at Grosheubach is actually an electical utility building. It has been cleverly painted by an artist.

On the other hand, the new, new Beetle is ugly. Do you agree?

Germany is hung up on bibers. They seem to think they have them, but we doubt it!

Many bridges in Germany have statues like this at the centre.

For much of the rest of the day we cruised along immaculate bike path, at or near the river. Every thirty minutes or so we passed another town. Each one had some really appealing parts that we saw, and no doubt lots else of interest that we would have seen had we stopped to investigate. None of the towns seemed to possess the drop dead gorgeous, don't even have to look for it beauty that we had seen along the Mosel. But even if they were not in Mosel's league, they were still super. An exception to this, a standout town, was the last one we entered: Miltenberg. The bike path had followed a car road for a bit, but then veered off down a cobbled old street that was really picturesque. The town also had an ancient gate, that we passed through, and a castle on the hill.

Miltenberg also possessed another treasure- a grocery store. In fact, it had two: Edeka and Lidl. Like on the Mosel, towns on the Main seem to be long on beauty and short on grocery stores. Dodie went in to Edeka while I set up in the parking lot to write the blog. I got a lot written and then forgot to save! So what you are reading here is unfortunately not the original, brilliant composition!

One of the things I was hoping for from Edeka was Knoppers. Knoppers are (IMHO) Germany's premier anti-bonk packaged wafers. It has been a year since we have had any. Without Knoppers, perhaps nothing exciting would come out of Edeka . Dodie returned, with the requisite sacks of oatmeal, and ... no Knoppers. However there was some compensation - a whole pile of Leibniz Pick Ups. Pick Ups are the number two excellent anti-bonk food of Germany. Also in the bag were two ready to reheat pasta dishes, a salad, and an amazing pile of other stuff. The whole cost was €20. Good food (and snack food) is really economical here.

More riverside geese. geese and ducks are everywhere here.

One other thing we bought today was two children's books. While yes, these will be for some children in the end, they are really for us. The background is that we often hear parents speaking to small children here, or better, grandparents. They always speak so softly, slowly, and clearly that we think if we could have one to speak to us that way, we, like the kids, would quickly learn. We also noted that watching Dora the Explorer on German TV raised our understanding noticeably. So we extrapolated all this to the idea that we could teach ourselves, from children's books.We went out and bought two, on subjects that we find interesting: bike riding and going to kindergarten. The only thing, these are geared for 5-8 year olds. That is way too advanced for us. We need 2-3 year old level! Maybe the advanced texts will not be a waste though - if we can get Sandra to read them to us at bedtime!

Our second Max and Connie book. There are lots more. All seemed interesting, but they are too advanced for us!

Upon leaving Miltenberg around 5:30 we thought to head for a camping that appeared on our map about 10-15 km distant. However we are feeling pretty good about last night's wild camp, and when we came to a level spot by the river, with a picnic table and waste basket, we could not resist.

We are sitting right now at that table, eating our salad (after a Pick Up appetiser) and getting ready to cook our pasta. Soon, though, we will pitch the tent. Unlike last night, we are completely out in the open, though there are no houses around. We have lots of water and battery power and food - it should be swell!

Today's ride: 58 km (36 miles)
Total: 1,027 km (638 miles)

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