Hazlach to Obertal

July 4, 2024

A big day of climbing and why we tour

After dinner last night Dave mentioned that he thought my right brake was feeling a bit wimpy. We discussed whether we should stop by the (closed) bike store and have them take a look at it before we got on the road. This didn’t fit too well with the day’s plan as the weather report was for afternoon rain and we would be climbing though the Schwarzwald National Park. 1140 meters of cumulative elevation gain was a lot for us, so an early start would be best.

He went down to the garage and checked my brake again. It felt better and he thinks it was just something to do with the fluid draining when he turned my bike upside down to change the tire. We were glad. There was another route we could have taken that skirted the park and eliminated the climbing but we had worked hard to make it out to this little neck of Germany and wanted to take advantage of it.

As we packed up our bikes to begin our ride, we saw this group of people heading out for what we think was a day ride in the area. This would be an awesome place for that sort of riding and we can imagine that's it's quite popular.

It was chilly and misty and fog hung in the air but it was beautiful in the forest. The first climb started after 17 km and it was on a small road with not much traffic, and steep pitches of up to 13 percent. (Later I looked up the climb and climbfinder.com describes it as: Löcherbergwasen from Oberharmersbach,” 5.3km long. 352 vertical meters with an average gradient of 6.6%). The top of the ascent is 660 meters above sea level. The only downside was that there was a lot of logging in the area and the traffic that existed tended to be logging trucks, which wasn’t fun. After the climb we had a killer descent from Löcherberg with Dave being way ahead of me. At km point 32 we stopped in the town of Bad Peterstal to have a coffee and a pastry before starting the second and bigger climb of the day. After parking our bikes and ordering, the lady that helped us came over to talk. Her name was Giselle and she really wanted to know about our travels. She and her husband have e-bikes and she would like to cycle tour and, we think, feels intimidated a bit by it, or her husband is. At one point she asked us how old we were and we freely shared our ancient ages and assured her that this is totally possible! All you have to do is pedal.

Right after we left the pastry shop it started to rain, about medium hard, and the cycling infrastructure petered out. This is a formal cycle route and it was marked as such, but much of the ride in the afternoon was on a busy road with car and truck speeds of 100 km. It was also a significant climb of 500 meters and we did most of it in the rain. As we climbed it got chillier but it was pretty. I was keeping a pretty close eye on my battery as this is the kind of climb that can quickly deplete it. Near the top we could see this big windmill in the mist.

The higher we climbed the mistier it became.

Our constant companion the rain joined us again, as these two hikers will attest.

There would have been some awesome vistas but the rain and fog diminished our ability to see much. (Climbfinder.com reports the climb as Alexanderschanze from Bad Peterstal-Griesbach, 11.2 km at 5.2 percent for 446 meters).

Just as we were starting the descent we ran into Just from Hamburg. He had been traveling for years in one fashion or the other, but this was his first cycle tour and he had been in Albania, Montenegro and Greece.

He had camping gear and was riding in shorts and flip flops, notwithstanding it was a cold and wet day. It made me feel pretty wimpy (and warm) in our fancy Goretex. We parted ways and started the descent which I had been dreading because of the traffic and cold.

Here we got a break. The cycle route peeled off the busy highway onto its own cycleway through the forest and it was fantastic: wonderful pavement, not too steep, and nobody else around. It was a magical 15 minutes of descending.

Throughout the day's ride we would come across these beautiful mountain homes.

We came out of the forest into the village of Obertal, selected for being the right distance for these two cycle tourers to stop for the night.

We were booked into a place I found on booking.com called Rechsmurg 27. It was decently maintained if a bit dated. Dave felt like the last refurbishment had been in the 80s!

There was one other hotel in town that didn’t appear to be open and we never saw any other restaurants, although google maps assured us there was a “wirst house” somewhere in the village. We also learned that our hotel was owned by a Chinese company and pretty much all its business was bus tour groups; in fact there was a Dutch tour group staying there. They were in the process of upgrading the internet - which meant we effectively didn’t have any- but our room had big windows and a great outdoor view of a pasture with sheep moving in and out. Dave hummed Bach’s “Sheep Gently Grazing.”

And our view. The sheep had wandered off at that point.

To say we stuck out as two cycling Americans was an understatement- and we wound up having a really good time because the staff were all so curious about us and wanted to understand what we were doing. Our waitress at dinner was Jolanta; she was Polish but had married a German guy and had lived in Germany for 10 years. She spoke respectable English and said she was very happy to have the chance to practice her English.

While we were having dinner - a buffet of chicken piccata, spinach gnocchi and mushroom soup- when two young women at another table came over. They had heard two Americans were there and wanted to know about the Trump/Biden situation! These two women, Dave and I were the only 4 people at the hotel besides the Dutch group. They were biologists working for Deutschbahn and were in the area for training with their sniffer dogs. They are employed to do environmental analysis when Deutschbahn wants to do some construction. Specifically, they and their dogs hunt for potential endangered species. They were staying with their dogs in the hotel. We saw them later across the parking lot with their dogs- two retrievers. What a career! If I could do something like that I’d almost want to go back to work. (Almost).

We had a nice stroll around the village after dinner but, notwithstanding it's high season, there wasn’t much going on. Whether a German town or village is large or small it’s very well-tended; Germany is a wealthy nation and they clearly spread the wealth around in a way we do not in the US, and they also look after their property. It wasn’t overly charming (like the Alsatian towns were) but it looked healthy enough.

This Dutch tour group stuck together. Here they're all playing cards after dinner.

The following morning at breakfast we also meet Isabelle, our waitress and chatted about cycling. She has two young kids and she described the trailer and tagalong unit she and her spouse use (not her description but I think that’s what she meant) when the four of the are out riding.

Today's ride: 57 km (35 miles)
Total: 2,336 km (1,451 miles)

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