To Mosbach

September 1, 2021

The morning begins with a series of trivial but exasperating vignettes. First, I awaken and reach for my iPad on the bed stand to check the time. It’s not there. It takes me awhile to realize that it’s under my pillow - apparently I fell asleep and landed my head on it while waiting for the slow WiFi service to upload the day’s photos. Fortunately it didn’t crack when a heavy brick landed on it.

Then Rachael shrieks when she discovers that my phone is nearly dead, the result of falling asleep before turning off our hotspot last night. Things worsen when she looks up the usage on our data plan and discovers that I drained most of our budget last night. And they worsen further when she looks up our T-Mobile account to see about extending our data plan and finds a fifty dollar bill for a phone call from a few weeks ago. She vows to call T-Mobile to talk through the charge and understand why it was so excessive. In the meantime I open the email and find a note from my sister Elizabeth, requesting a phone call. Something’s come up obviously, and another lengthy phone call is in the works.

Really, it’s all too much to deal with before coffee.

The view from our room down onto the Kornmarkt this morning. Beautiful this morning, and still very quiet. It doesn’t hurt either seeing all that blue sky,

Things feel much better after breakfast. We pack up and leave our hotel around 10, in no big hurry because we have an easy 38 mile ride today, east to Mosbach.

Oh, wait. I forgot another interesting problem to work through this morning. Rachael was looking ahead to see what restaurants were near our hotel that would be open today and found none except a doner kebab stand. That can’t be right, I say - Mosbach is a significant town, and will undoubtedly have many options available. She shows me the map. She’s right, because somehow I haven’t booked us into Mosbach itself. Instead we’re in some tiny suburb three miles out of town. A booking error.

Fortunately this little hotel has free cancellation up until this evening, so Rachael does her research and finds a place she likes the sound of and sends me a link for. I look at it and agree that it does sound quite nice. Unfortunately though it’s on the Inn River, not far from Passau - maybe 200 miles off route. I take my own look and find the Schwanen Hotel right in the center of Mosbach’s small altstadt. We book the one, cancel the other, and finally head down to breakfast.

OK. Now we’re really ready to go, off on our easy 38 miler to Mosbach. It begins with a ride through the town gate and across the old bridge to the right bank of the Neckar. We’ll follow the Neckar upriver for nearly all of today’s ride.

Before crossing the bridge we stop for a last look at the Heidelberg Bridge Monkey. The Heidelberg Monkey stands beside the tower gate on the city side of the bridge. This bronze version, created in 1977, is a modernization of the original stone sculpture that dates to the 1400’s and was destroyed during the Nine Days War, whatever that was. There’s a story and mythology behind the statue, and it’s worth reading the whole Wikipedia article for a more complete background and humor. This excerpt describes the current mythology:

Upon the wish of the association Alt-Heidelberg, Gernot Rumpf designed a bronze statue of the monkey with a hollow head in 1977. It was then installed at the Old Bridge next to the tower in 1979. In contrast to its predecessors, the monkey's right hand does not grasp its posterior, but shows the sign of the horns, which is supposed to ward off the evil eye.

Today, the statue is a popular tourist attraction. It is said that if a visitor touches the sign of horns, they will return to Heidelberg. If a visitor touches the mirror, they will become wealthy, and if they touch the mice next to the monkey, they will have many children.

The legend doesn’t say what luck comes with taking a selfie with your face inside the monkey’s head. Getting Covid perhaps.

They’re laughing now, but this may not turn out so well.

Our easy forty mile ride (longer now, since we’re actually biking all the way to Mosbach) gets off to an unpromising start as we quickly lose our way trying to find a quieter road out of Heidelberg and end up on a narrow towpath suitable for foot traffic but not really suited to bicycles. We do a good job by not falling off the unprotected edge into the Neckar and getting washed over the falls by the lock, but at the end we have to carry our bikes up a steep set of stairs to get back to the road.

Not so bad here, but it felt less secure when the path dropped straight down to the river. On the other hand, this might be a good option on a rainy day.

Then things take a comedic turn for the worse when we pull off at a grocery store to pick up lunch fixings. I take the long way to the store entrance by biking down to the automobile access to the parking lot; while Rocky adventurously tries her luck with the stairs, to bad effect.

Oh, that’s right: back in 2013 on the Via Verde between Carmona and Utrera when Rocky fell in to a sand trap.

After that things stabilize. We’re back on the bike route. After following the river road for a few miles we turn off onto a beautiful cycle path by the river, admiring the rocky cliffs and the occasional castle. This lush green stretch of the Neckar is quite dramatic all the way to our turnoff near Mosbach with the river taking its serpentine route through hills that rise several hundred feet above either bank. The trail surface varies between the usual choices of asphalt, pavers, and dirt.

Along the Neckar. This is Schadeck Castle, I think.

Leaving Neckarsteinach our easy 40 mile day takes another interesting turn when we miss our way out of town and veer off onto another towpath. This one is definitely on the edge - narrow, precarious, with the occasional brush to be skirted or hawser to carefully stepped and rolled over. We might have turned back if we’d thought it was safe to reverse the bikes on the narrow ledge, but our Garmins assured us there was an off ramp ahead - as there was, up a short but very steep set of stairs followed by a quarter mile track through the weeds before finally getting back on firm ground again.

But we’re doing great! Ten miles in already and it’s only 12:30!

We choose a poor route out of Neckarsteinach.

This is turning into quite an interesting day.

An interesting day for staircase encounters.

Not one of those beckoning roads we keep hearing about.

That’s it for the most notable obstacles to the day though. Navigation for the remainder of the ride is generally straight forward, although we continually look at bicycles wheeling along on the opposite bank and wonder if we’ve selected the wrong side. And although there’s about eight miles of dirt and light gravel, which is fine for a mile or two.

Really though, it is a very beautiful ride. Now that we know what to avoid it’s one I’d be happy to repeat someday. Especially memorable is the view of Hirschhorn, where we stopped for lunch sitting on a riverside bench enjoying the extraordinary view of the city and its castle with the constant roar of the waterfall cascading over its lock drowning out the sound of cars on the opposite bank.

As we cross the Neckar once more Hirschhorn comes into view at the bend.

Looking across the Neckar at Hirschhorn.

A mile or so of this is one thing. Seven or eight miles is another.

Zwingenberg Castle. I’d forgotten about this splendid structure, which we also passed back in 1996. comparing the two photos, not much has changed over the past quarter century.

Crossing the Neckar at Zwingenberg. Beautiful bridge, as you’ll see in the video if we ever manage to upload it.

An idyllic stretch along the river. We should come back and rent a canoe some year.

We enter Mosbach, bike up into the old town, and look around the half timbered houses wondering which is our hotel. We look up its name again - the Schwanen - and then Rachael smartly notes the white swan suspended from one of them.

Checking in at our hotel is confusing as the hostess and we share no common language. She’s Russian, and German and French are her second and third. English doesn’t even make the list. We do our best to work through the transaction with mixed results, but we’re then shown to our quarters. It’s a spectacular place - spacious, comfortable, and facing directly on the town square.

There’s more to say about Mosbach, but we’ll be here for two nights so we’ll stop here for now.

For our first meal we ate here at a Greek restaurant on the square, just around the corner from our room. A perfect evening for dining out.

The view from our room. I suppose eventually I’ll get tired of looking at all these half timbered houses, but we’re not there yet.

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Ride stats today: 39 miles, 900’; for the tour: 723 miles, 18,000’

Today's ride: 39 miles (63 km)
Total: 721 miles (1,160 km)

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Keith KleinHi,
Sorry to hear of your tribulations. Electronic devices are a pain, except when you don’t have them
Any reason you didn’t follow the Neckartal Radweg? Rather smooth sailing, and decently signposted if I remember correctly. Avoids mooring lines, too!
Cheers,
Keith
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3 years ago

Scott AndersonTo Keith KleinAny reason, other than the usual foolishness and carelessness? No, not really.

Actually, we did generally follow the radweg but had a couple of concentration lapses at a few key points and were too stubborn to backtrack once we realized it. I’d say we were on the radweg for 80-90 percent of the way to the turnoff to Mosbach. Also though, there are several stretches - near Heidelberg particularly - where there are designated bike routes on both banks of the river so we had choices about which side to follow and where to cross over.
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3 years ago