A late start this morning, but the plan was for a short day.
After breakfast, we visited the gothic cathedral of St Georg. I love gothic cathedrals; they seem so light and majestic. This one contains the remains of St Aurelius, martyred by Nero, carefully preserved and sumptuously garbed, below the Altar of St Sebastian.
We returned to our gasthaus and collected our bikes to set off for Rothenburg. We hadn't got very far when we stopped to put on our rain jackets and I put on my shoe covers too. The rain intensified and we hoped the forecast was correct: showers for an hour so so and then clearing. I can report now that this was so. In the meantime, it was warm enough that my glasses fogged when I stopped and didn't clear even coasting fast downhill. Between the fog and the raindrops I couldn't see much of anything.
The Radweg dipsy-doodles around here. It starts out in the right general direction from Dinkelsbühl to Rothenburg, northwest, but takes a sharp turn to the east at Buchhof, jogs north then east then north again before turning west about 5 km from Feuchtwangen. Looking at the track recorded by my Garmin, we seem to have skipped all that but it was after Feuchtwangen that we got really confused. The signs pointed us along a rural track, that part was nothing unusual, but it was two wheel tracks paved with paving stones (not cobbles). Very labour-intensive for a farm track, especially since it only led us to a rough track through a forest. We emerged near a roadway with no signs at all. Thankfully, our Garmins told us which way to turn.
By the time we reached the top of the ridge before Schillingsfürst, the rain had stopped and we put away our rain gear. Lunch in a tiny plaza in Schillingsfürst.
We joined the Tauber valley after Diebach and it was flat and smooth to Rothenburg on der Tauber. Approaching by bicycle from the south, there is a big climb to this hilltop fortress town. We came in through the south gate and easily found the gasthaus the Grampies stayed in last year. (https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/books/day-29-heilsbronn-to-rothenburg-ob-der-tauber/#7330_1913595_DSCN5227_our_house_zed20140529_243047_30p)No one answered our knock and the Weinstube Pöbel did not open until 4 p.m. so we went to find a bakery cafe. I had photographed the information our front and tried my first German phone call. I managed to communicate with the proprietor and he did have a room for us. Since he has only 3 rooms as far as I can tell, we were lucky. A big festival had just started in Rothenburg and it was Saturday. The least expensive accommodation on Booking.com was significantly more than the 50€ for this room (with private shower, wc, and breakfast).
More wandering around was followed by dinner up the street from our gasthaus. On the proprietor's recommendation we joined the night watchman tour, in English. We learned afterward that there was a later tour in German. The English tour was interesting and very different from the one in Dinkelsbühl. The crowd was much larger, we could understand the stories, and there was no drinking.
We arrived through the gate at the bottom and there it is on the right in this view--Weinstube Pöbel, where the Grampies stayed last year and we stayed this year. Clean but quaint, very friendly proprietor.
The main square is where the Night Watchman tour starts. It's really popular! Everyone here is waiting for the English tour which happens before the German one.
The Rothenburg Night Watchman tour ended well before dark so we wandered some more and came across this guy. He's everywhere. I suspect he goes by St Jakob here.
