When I look at the days track I notice a couple of things: For one, it was a HOT day when we went into the cities. Up to 34 C when we went into Worth (and that was while we were moving) and then after stopping for a while at the mall and parking in the shade it got down to 27 degrees and then right back up to 33 as we left the mall and headed for Karlsruhe.
The story of the day, though was in the routing itself: I was looking at the Bikeline route Steve had sent me for the section of the Rhine we were following and I saw that it went right by Philippsburg and on to Worth which was kind of our target area for today. It crossed the river about half way down so we would have a track on the west side of the Rhine which was what I thought would be nice and why we were targeting Worth instead of Karlsruhe.
So this is our actual route, not the one I had loaded on the GPS derived from the Bikeline route
This tanker was pushing quite a bow wave going upstream against a stiff current. For a while after it passed there were some pretty good standing waves left behind
Well after this lovely lunch break the saga of the Bikeline velo route began. We reached the point where the GPS showed us crossing the river to find ferry ramps (on both sides of the river) but no ferry. Didn't look like the ramps had been used for years. Oh well, I guess we will continue on the east bank unless something else presents itself. And something else did present itself soon after, our old friend, Um lei tung. (Erika tells me there is an old joke that goes like this: "Who is the most famous Chinaman in Germany? Um lei Tung (which means detour)")
These yellow bike signs are detour signs and the Umleitung part is found on the white sign underneath.
It was a major detour lasting for many kms and taking us way east of the river. Eventually the signs, which had been good for long enough to really get your confidence up, just sort of disappeared. At least one must have been missing, which means you don't see any others since you are no longer on the original detour, you are just making up your own. Good thing we are on a spontaneous type of tour :) Also good thing I have a good sense of direction, I could always find turns that would eventually take us back to the river.
We were in a really large woodsy reserve area with canals here and there and an amazing number of good bikeable gravel roads criss crossing the place.
While the detour signs were still in evidence we saw a lot of apple orchards
A promising road right to the main river, but when we got there we were told by a local cycling couple "No, the path on the river is still blocked (or maybe doesn't actually exist at this point) we need to go back a couple hundred meters and take the road to the right. This is the couple that would cycle on ahead of us and then wait at any critical turn to make sure we got it right. All the way into Worth. Then they even waited at the first intersection in town to help us find our way to the mall and bathrooms, etc. We meet such wonderful people traveling this way.
A channel of the river was on the left, the main river was way over to the right, out of sight, and there was big industry everywhere. Still there was lots of natural vegetation and the canal like river channel showing a pretty decent current, so it was pretty nice
So we sat in the shade on the hot sidewalks while each of us had a chance to go inside and tend to various chores such as buying some groceries, getting some cash from the cash machine and getting the wifi at the mall to give us search capabilities on our phones. Erika found us a place for the night about 12 km away back over the bridge and to the other side of Karlsruhe.
It was still very hot at 33 C but we followed a good quiet path that led first through farmland, then through an industrial section, then we started to follow a stream that was a beautiful linear park for miles and miles. There was lots of bicycle traffic but most of the trail was also shady.
Once we reached the end of the park and it was time to come up into the heart of the city things got a lot more difficult. Even in the park it was hard to know which side of the creek we were supposed to be on from time to time because we were relying on google maps on Erika's phone and it was having to guide us "offline" from the memory it had loaded when Erika was online at the mall. Long story short, it was being flakey and Erika was so frazzled by the heat that she finally just turned it over to me and I zoomed in and out on what the phone knew, and memorized the turns and counted the blocks so I could navigate from memory and not let google get flakey on us.
Here is our hotel. Our balcony is two floors up from the ground level
I really liked the hotel. It was run like a hostel with private rooms, 2 shared baths on each floor, breakfast and common kitchen on the first floor (we would call it the second floor in Canada and the US). It was well run from what I could tell by a young man who lived on site, it seems, at least he had a bed in his office on the first floor and had crashed on it when I checked out, I just left the key on his desk.
The hotel had a kind of hostel vibe to it, young people in the courtyard doing some crazy painting in the evening, lots of original artwork in the rooms, drums and bongos here and there (including our room), that kind of thing. We paid 56 Eu for bed and breakfast.
For those who care, here is the summary of what was learned about the routing business today:
The Bikeline map seemed to be quite outdated. Maybe there are updates that we should be looking for?
Related to that, I noticed that the bikeline track seemed to stray off of the actual path quite a lot. This showed up on the computer as I was examining the track on RWGPS but I didn't try to make any changes. While actually on the trail, this would show up as making us look off the trail a bit sometimes
I believe my GPS to be correct and the track as mapped by Bikeline to be inaccurate. At one point, the bikeline track would have had us out in a lake
The problem is that sometimes I don't know I am off on the wrong trail because I can't tell if the road I am on is going off trail or if the track is simply wavering a bit.
This problem isn't limited to the Bikeline track, it just seemed worse than usual when I have RWGPS creating the track for me
My conclusion at this time is that the most dependable way to get a good track to follow is to use RWGPS to create the track for me using the OSM Cycle maps.
I need to download the OSM files for Germany and get them loaded on my GPS. This would make it a lot easier to see which road I am actually supposed to be on when there are tricky intersections. Right now when I am looking at my Garmin to follow a track, all I see is a black line on a completely blank screen and a pointer indicating where I am and which direction I am going on the screen and a blue line of where I have been.
Heh heh, you would think I had gotten that done by now ...
Today's ride: 60 km (37 miles) Total: 1,320 km (820 miles)
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Steve Miller/GrampiesHow frustrating to be out on the road in the heat and have the track guidance be flaky! And then once in a hotel (or tent!) there is still a shortage of internet, screen size, and pure stamina to figure things out. So here I am with lots of internet, big screen, and a good night's sleep, and I say "Ok, I will figure out why the track tried to put Marvin and Erika into a lake".
First off, the track you have was dated 2014, and the data points within it were dated 2013. On the Esterbauer web site, the track date is 2016, so there is some updating going on. The actual printed book that I have is dated 2011, so the paper representation of the track in that would be a bit old too. Still, I don't think the Rhein track is changing all that dramatically.
The bigger mystery is about the lake (which I take to be Baggersee Giesen). When I load the load the 2014 track using the PC software "GPXsee" and show the track on Open Street map, sure enough it goes right into the lake! But when I load the track into Google Maps, the track slides by just to the west of the lake. However, the underlying shape of the track in both cases is identical. It's as if the carpet of the world has been yanked over by about 1/8 of a km! Soon I will load the track into Osmand+ on Android and see if I end up in the lake.
But, the plot thickens even more. Since we passed this way in April, why did our feet not get wet in the lake? We fired up the exact track we used in April, from the device we had then, and hey, it swung way west, through Hordt! Now where did we get that track from? Can't remember!
Unfortunately, access to the very latest Bikeline tracks is hard because, heh heh, we think we lent you the books with the access codes. There are three Rhein books, and we do have Andermatt to Basel here. So we can double check those tracks. Stay tuned for that, plus I will try to see where I got that track that went by Hordt. Meanwhile it could be a good idea to buy rubber boots or a raft! Reply to this comment 6 years ago
Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Steve Miller/GrampiesLake mystery "deepens": Looking at the track in Osmand+, it goes through the lake, and in Bikemap.net? - through the lake if using Open Streetmap and beside the lake (mostly!) in "Relief Map". The ",mostly" is a clue, for the shape of the lake is different between these two maps! I think these are artificial lakes that are either being dredged or filled in! So that leaves open the question of which are the most up to date tracks AND/OR maps!
Dodie is saying she is glad she went "inland" and avoided the area. I think in this we had not only the mystery track but also signage on the path indicating an "alternate". Anyway, as Dodie's Mom used to say in her last years, "That is all water over the bridge". It would be nice to have the latest possible maps and tracks going "forward"! Reply to this comment 6 years ago
Marvin PaxmanWell the dates on the tracks would certainly explain the lack of ferry. Clearly there had been a ferry there but not in the last year or more. Would be interesting to test RWGPS and see if I could fool it into providing that ferry into a track or if it knows better Reply to this comment 6 years ago
