Day 35: Landsberg to Lechbruck

June 3, 2014

Our concern about our room last night was not just that it was high priced and dingy. We also wondered about the breakfast thing. Normally in Germany breakfast is included, and it ranges from good to terrific. Here, they invented a charge of 3 euros each, for breakfast which then would be optional. The thing is, 3 euros can barely buy a coffee and roll at a bakery, so we assume that when breakfast is included at a normal place, it eats up a lot more of the room charge than that. So what would this 3 euro effort produce?

It turned out that the breakfast buffet was one of the best we have seen, with lots of soft cheeses, sausages, eggs, and even mozzarella and tomatoes. The only thing, the proprietor and his mother sat there and fixed us with baleful stares, seemingly measuring each expensive cheese and fruit we downed. Made us seriously nervous, and we were glad when we rolled out back onto the street.

The town of Landsberg is built on a hill above the Lech river, and our hotel was near the top. There is entrusting stuff to look at as one would proceed down the hill, but we seemed to get locked in by walls and steps, so that when we finally came to the interesting bits we were mostly down the hill from them. However, we did land in the Rathaus square. This was a proper rathaus square, the way we have come to understand it. First off, there are three bakeries minimum around it, then the rathaus, and a church.

Landsberg is nice, but get on the wrong side of ceertain walls and stairways and this is what happens

By Landsberg, the Lechgoes over this chute

We sat on a bench to regroup. Last night our CGOAB friend Trica Graham, seeing how we were finding that the Via Claudia Augusta radweg was working for us better than the Romantische Strasse radweg, sent us some of the maps by email. We sat on the bench and scrutinized the emailed maps, trying to decide if the Via would be best for us to keep following (more direct? fewer hills?) even if we had no paper maps or .gpx for it. We decided that yes, we would go for it.

By the time we had made our decision, we saw that the tourist information in the rathaus was now open. Dodie went in, and came back with... the paper Bikeline book of the Via Claudia Augusta! So guess what folks, that's one more "Book" that has become part of this tour. The book, by the way, covers 800 km of bikeway, all the way from the Donau to Northern Italy. We are already hatching a plan to cycle the whole darn thing, plus any other Roman routes, next year. We might call it the Grampies' Roman Holiday.

Tricia's version of the Book, being older, did not include the option of downloading the GPS track, but our new book did. So Dodie said "Do it!". Ahhh, right. I held my head and closed my eyes for a minute, visualising the 20 or more distinct steps that would be needed to actually achieve that. To give an idea of the issues: the Samsung Galaxy S3 that we are using as a GPS has no internet access. The tablet does. So the tablet would have to go to the Bikeline website and get the track. The website, of course is all German, and what they do is collect your email address and email you a link from which you can download the track(s), in a .zip file. Then you need to somehow unzip. And how to transfer the files from that point into the not connected to anything Galaxy S3? Answer - by putting the files onto the external SD card of the tablet and then doing an SD card transplant.

It was the SD card transplant that gave me the jitters. I was sitting on a bench with a grating just in front of me. MicroSD cards are little bitty things, and they are spring loaded in the their sockets. Why didn't I move inside somewhere, or at least away from the grating? Dunno - touring brain. So with slightly trembling hands I popped out these precious chips, giving one to Dodie to hold, oh so carefully.

The bench, the grate, and the chocolate factory.

Anyway, it worked out, and Dodie was up and running with a track for the Via Claudia onscreen in front of her. Before leaving on this new thing, however, we found that the strain of the surgery (not to mention the baleful hotel guy and his mother) had sapped our strength. So we popped into the chocolate shop opposite where we were sitting and had them make us two hot chocolates. Also bought six of their chocolates, which they were making on site. When ready, they carried our mugs out to us - right in the public square where we were sitting. Nice. I also went in and (this time) asked if I could snap a shot of some of the chocolates. "Well of course!" came the proper reply.

Some of the chocolates available for dessert, after breakfast!

It is really strawberry time now. These are the sweet, red all the way through ones - not the white cored tasteless California variety.

Now we crossed the Lech, with its interesting water chute just by the town's bridge, and using all our new mapping capability, headed off south. Dodie was quite handily able to avoid most of the nasty chevrons that mark hills in the route in a Bikeline book, and anyway, none of the hills were actually particularly vexacious.

Now we come to the bit that always seems surprising on a bike. The bike (especially ours) seems to move rather slowly - but if you blink for a few seconds (ok, hours) you can find that you have been transported into an entirely different world. We expected that to happen at this stage, because we know we are headed for the Alps. But it did seem that we blinked and suddenly the fields of corn or oats became the "Alm" - upland meadows. The cows, which had actually been not much around anyway, became more numerous and many of them were "Swiss style" ones. Many also wore bells, making a very musical tinkling. Finally, we looked up and ... there were the mountains! The Lech had suddenly changed as well - now it had the turquoise tint of a mountain stream.

Along the Via Claudia Augusta are many explanatory panels. This one is about brewing.

The Via is marked by these Roman type columns

There are lots of Roman reminders along the Via Claudia

We noticed a large lumbering plane going by. It soon disgorged a dozen parachutists, like this one.

This is the fourteen seat cedar meeting house.

We have now drawn our little expedition almost up against the wall of the Alps. The handout maps that you get in this area have the south at the top, because that is the wall of the Alps. Our plan is to continue tomorrow the short distance to Fussen, which is at the foot of the mountains. We will stick there for a bit, and go see Neuschwanstein, which is the famous white castle of mad King Ludwig II. We will then skirt along the face of the mountains and finally dive in, making our way to Garmish-Partenkirchen. From there... hey, stay tuned and follow it all, right here!

South is up with this map. Fussen is in the upper right corner.Lechbruck, where we are now, is near the lower right. You can see how we are cycling in relatively flat, but will hit the wall of mountains next.

Today's ride: 57 km (35 miles)
Total: 1,978 km (1,228 miles)

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