July 3, 2014
Day 65: Rieder to Thumen
Last night I thought I would illustrate how high we had to climb to reach the guesthouse with a photo looking down to the Grosser Alpsee. But I thought, no I will put in a nice morning shot of it. But this morning the lake was completely invisible. Maybe I can claim that the cloud was below us, or maybe it was just mist on the lake. When you see the photo, you be the judge.
At breakfast, I put together egg, salami, and various cheeses on a bun, which they call here a semmel. So I guess I had an egg McSemmel (or two). That did not deter us from stopping at a bakery near the bottom of our hill. Actually, we needed to stock up on things for lunch, since breakfast did not leave anything to spare. One of the things we got was a big slice of mohn pie. Wow, it really had a lot of costly poppyseed in it. When the photos get uploaded, you will see what I mean.
Our cycling began by the lake and continued with a continuous panarama of meadows, cows, and mountains. In short, pretty much the same as in the previous two days. We are saying that this is probably the most beautiful part of our tour so far. The hills are something of a necessary evil in it, since all the beautiful scenes of hills would not be possible without ... the hills.
As we cycled along we came upon one solution to problems posed by hills - a helicopter was being used to move quantities of cement from trucks at the roadside to a site up the hill. Again and again they filled a large metal container suspended from the chopper. It flew a short distance up the mountain and dumped it. We are not sure what they were building up there, but it seemed like a simple house foundation. It was fun to watch a chopper flying so close and low, though.
Last year, the mounting plate for the stand on my Bike Friday tore loose, and was eventually re-welded by the factory. Yesterday, Dodie's did the same. The temporary fix is to install the clamp type fitting that is used on all aftermarket centre mounted stands. Last year, we bought a $7 stand at Walmart and threw away the stand, keeping only the clamp and bolt. Today, for Dodie's case, we found a bike shop that had a nice quality cast clamp. 5 euros solved the problem, but Bike Friday will still be asked to fix the original fitting. Clearly they need to do better welds in this area.
All through this region cows have been our constant companions. There have been lots of cow shots in the blog, and today there are more. This is a real dairy area, and the cows are of course only part of it. Other parts are the large farm houses, half devoted to housing the cows, then there are the meadows, the hay and silage making, and the tractors zooming around the paths. With the dairying comes cheese making too. Yesterday we noticed a poster describing a cheese factory circuit, and were sorry that it seemed none of the towns were on our route. This turned out to be not quite right, and we ran into at least two. Unfortunately, both factories were closed. One closed at 12, and we showed up at 12:06. Sigh. However, in the town of Wigratzbad we came upon a cheese shop. Inside was the usual refrigerated display, with the owner behind. In the case were dozens of cheeses, and I asked - "Which of these are from here?" "All of them", was the reply "All were made within 30 km of here".
We tried one just called "mountain cheese", which was there in versions of four of months old, eight months old, and one older than that (over a year). We tried the youngest one, and the next, and preferred the younger, milder one. We got a large hunk of that, and also a soft camembert style one with pepper corns in it! We also added in some of those semi-dry ultra smoked sausages that typically are hung from the roof. Haven't tried them yet, but they should be great.
Needless to say we left really pleased that we had located a source of local cheese. They call it generally Emmentaler, which is kind of puzzling because that conjures images of Switzerland. On the other hand, Switzerland is extremely close to where we are.
Wigratzbad also contained a bit of a puzzling church, or church complex. The first thing we noticed was a very modernistic church complex, the first such thing we had seen in Bavaria. Then we came to a more familiar church design, but with the same modernistic banners around. We went into this one, and found a place totally devoted to Mary, and to prayer asking for help from Mary. There were people inside actively engaged in this, so there seemed to be a lot of kneeling and singing going on. Outside of town was a large parking lot for visitors to the complex, and a large statue of "Pater Pio.". Right now we have little or no internet, so feel quite blinded. We would like to find out what this was all about!
The hill climbing, meadows, and mountains somewhat came to an end as we descended an escarpment, down to flatter land that would eventually border the Bodensee. There were still a few quite steep hills, but the general trend was down. We stopped about 10 km from the Lake itself. We have been trying contact our friend Bernie, near Bregenz - which is southeast of where we will hit the lake - at Lindau. If we can reach him, we will go his way. If not, we will likely head north west, around the lake counter clockwise. Bernie, if you are reading this - send us a message!
For the first time since arriving in Paris, our T-Mobile SIM has failed to make a good enough connection to post the blog. We are swapping in the OneSim chip. If you are reading this, it worked. But the cost is very high, so uploading photos will have to wait for a while. Check back - they do a good job illustrating what we have been talking about.
Today's ride: 58 km (36 miles)
Total: 3,397 km (2,110 miles)
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