Day 62: Bad Tolz to Bad Kohlgrub

June 30, 2014

It is difficult to form a clear impression of what we are dealing with on this portion of the Bodensee-Konigssee route. Is it the hilly, no services challenge we anticipated two days ago? Is it the drop dead gorgeous quintessence of Bavaria we credited it with yesterday? Or is it the reasonably nice but take care to dodge the hills and/or traffic place we will talk about today? Of course, it is just possible that it is all of these things, and that our immense speed on the bicycles is flashing impressions by at a dizzying pace!

While Bad Tolz does have some nice buildings on the market street, the area overall lacked pizazz. Our guesthouse, while very clean and nice, was a sort of normal building in a suburb containing other sort of normal guest houses. I am fudging a bit by using "sort of", because no matter how plain by south German standards, these houses and neighbourhoods are still way beyond anything we have back home.

Beyond Bad Tolz, houses continued to be just normally decorated, and the surroundings did not inspire - being mainly nearby trees and shrubs. We did however spot two lovely horses, that posed for a photo.

Somewhere near Schlehdorf things changed for a while, and we spotted some very well decorated houses, more of those giant farm houses, and more open meadows, with the Ammergau Alps in the background.

All the while, Dodie had kept her eye on the twin evils shown on her Bikeline maps: Dotted lines, indicating gravel, and chevrons, indicating significant hills. Hills on any day are bad news, but this day we were cycling the rain. Gravel in the rain is really no fun. We had already been successful in dodging the twins, by choosing roads instead of the designated paths, and then often finding cycle ways for good stretches along those roads. We devised the scheme of heading by road 2062 to Murnau (which is technically off route), and then using it take us to Bad Kohlgrub (which is back on route). This gay plan came to a crashing halt when we ran in to a detour, caused by flooding of the Loisach river. We ended up having to somehow fight our way back onto 2062, beyond the problem area. In Murnau we tried to find a quieter way to Bad Kohlgrub, but ended up just spinning in circles, under train tracks, over train tracks, over traffic circles, through traffic circles. Finally we got back on 2062 and rode the white line in to Bad Kohlgrub.

It was still quite early, but the map showed pretty much nothing coming up - not a town, let alone a camping, so we stuck at Bad Kohlgrub. Dodie used her eagle eye to spot a "zimmer frei" (room for rent) sign, and we fetched up at Gasthaus Bauer, just outside of town. The proprietors are a cute older couple. The lady asked where we had come from this day, and when I said "Bad Tolz", she had no idea what we were talking about. I repeated it twice, but no luck. Hmmm, maybe people are insular here and do not know places 58km away? Finding this unlikely, but still puzzled, I got out my map and put my finger on Bad Tolz. "Was ist das?" I demanded of the old fellow. He looked at the map, but gave me to understand that he could not see it without his glasses. Grrrph. I put the map away. But, the fellow was soon back, with his glasses! Oh, Bad Tölz he exclaimed! The thing is, I had said "Bad Tolls", and he said either "Bad Tools" or maybe "Bad Toils". Whatever!

The Gasthaus is one of those large farm buildings, where the back 1/2 or 3/4 is for the animals. In the case of ours, though, the animals have been booted out, and replaced by tourists. The rooms, of course, are renovated!

Beyond Bad Tolz - rather plain houses but nice horses!

The land did open up to meadows in places

Meadows and mountains - some of our favourite scenes did briefly appear

A brief glimse of Murnau, while looking for the best way out

Still looking for the story of this fireman - who keeps cropping up on various walls

We have not looked at the town yet - but Bad Kohlgrub looks like a real resort

The rain has now stopped, and we have the prospect of a better weather day tomorrow. We will easily pass Wieskirche, where we have already been Day 37 - part 2 . Then we will strike off on the final bit - the 124 km dash from near Fussen to Lindau, on the Bodensee!

Here are the three stages of the route. In the first stage, we left from Raubling, and headed west. Today we did Bad Tolz to Bad Kohlgrub. It will then take two days or so to do the third bit and reach the Bodensee.

The Bodensee-Konigssee from Salzburg through Raubling

The Bodensee-Konigssee from Bad Tolz through Bad Kohlgrub

The Bodensee-Konigssee from Fussen to Lindau

Today's ride: 58 km (36 miles)
Total: 3,242 km (2,013 miles)

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