Day 25: Ludwigshafen to Worth

May 7, 2022

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In the interests of truth in traveloguing, we have the photo below, which was taken in Ludwigshafen minutes out of our hotel. You see a nondescript cityscape, which is neither crowded high rises nor historic buildings, but just generally bleagh. Dodie points out that except for the high spot of downtown Speyer, this is her assessment of the entire 83 km travelled today.

Well ok, we did get some time in forest, which Dodie likes a lot, and we did get to see both football (soccer) and ball hockey being played.

Signs described wildlife that presumably we had a chance of spotting. I like the "fledermaus", mainly because of Mozart.

Speyer was the major town on our route today, The centrepiece of the town is the Cathedral of St. Mary and St. Stephen. Usually you can pick up a pamphlet with information about how many years B.C. the church construction was started (lol) but I could not find this info in the pamphlet we did get. It seems to be a minimum pf 1000 years old. The thing is, we are still in a strong Lutheran area, and if you want a zippy cathedral, it can not be Lutheran - they are far too serious to drop in even a single pink cherub!

Outside the cathedral is a statue/diorama called the Mount of Olives. It was made in the mid 1500's

So boring did the cathedral seem, that I found myself looking at my cartoon map, for a bit of stimulation. It looks way better on paper.

But it turns out Speyer was hiding a "secret". Directly opposite the main entrance of the cathedral is a pedestrian shopping street (leading to some others as well). The way is shown by this statue of a pilgrim on his way to Santiago.

Beyond the pilgrim we find a very long street. It is packed with cafes, eis cafes, and a large variety of shops.

Toward the end of the shopping area is this tower.

Lots of people arrive in the pedestrian area by bicycle, and park them in clusters like this.

Even this little guy is getting in on the act.

A big attraction for us in the shopping area was the post office. Today it was time for hopefully our only mailback of the trip. Dodie went in and bought this box, size large, and proceeded to throw stuff into it. The first category of things was planned and legitimate - like a down jacket, long sleeve merino sweater, extra gloves, chemical handwarmers, and extra socks. But other things are items that came along because of one sort of anxiety or other about whether they might be needed. These include two rolls of electrical tape (!), many zip ties, extra tire pressure gauge, big bag of misc nuts and bolts, antibiotics and other drugs, spare glasses, and suchlike. The total weight was 10 pounds, and it cost 40 euros to send this lot to Canada.

On the customs form I put the value as zero, and the post office lady questioned that. If the value is zero, why would I spend 40 euros to ship it? Yeah, why?

The cathedral looked a bit more fetching when viewed from the commercial street. The street really was the main fun. And oh, an eis could not be resisted (by me!). But this time the order was a conservative two kugels - Stracciatella and Speculoos. The cost was 2.80 - more than we remember from 3 years ago - of course.

By the way, while in Canada we choose either a cup or a cone of ice cream, here (apart from it not even being ice cream) you choose a becher or a waffel.

This full sized plane caught our attention on the way out of town. It's part of a museum of technology.

We also noticed several of these attrocious holiday camping emplacements, on the shores of small lakes. It puzzles us that Germans, who maintain their homes in immaculate condition, enjoy roughing it in these country slums.

Remarkably for this Rhine route, we saw not a drop of the Rhine for the first 50 km of today's ride. Then suddenly, at Gemersheim, we burst out onto the shore, and enjoyed this super width paved path. It was as if we had never been banished to the the semi-urban wilderness. The shoreline travel lasted only 7 km, though, and the path wandered off into the woods and farm fields. But the great surface and the width persisted, and we cruised rapidly along.

Only thing, we must have made an arithmetic error, because our planned 68 km day ended as 83. For tomrrow we have tried to target a much shorter day, but we'll see if it comes true. One thing, we will enter France in just a few km from here. After a month of wonderful German brotchen and pastries, we are looking forward to croissant, baguette, and eclair. However, there is no way we will touch a prepaid French breakfast. Booking has prices for that like 12 euros each. We know for sure that will be croissant and coffee.

A rare for today encounter with the Rhine.

The path had several "radler treff"s. Mostly cyclists stop for beer, but there is food too.

Our hotel for today is called Vater Rhein (Father Rhine). It's quite traditional and quiet inside, but is across a busy street from an American style shopping complex. The signage from Baumarkt (= Home Depot) rather outdoes Home Depot for garrishness.

What gives Meaning to Life for today: Peace and Quiet on the trail, not in a city.

Today's ride: 83 km (52 miles)
Total: 1,464 km (909 miles)

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