The breakfast at the hotel had all the required elements, and even two unique ones. The first unique bit was scrambled eggs. Normally only boiled eggs appear in a German breakfast. The second unique bit was boiled eggs - not unique in itself but this time the eggs were actually hard boiled. We have tried a lot of times to get an actual hard boiled egg, but even when we think we have overcome the language barrier, we have never overcome the culinary barrier. But this time - hard boiled!
Fellow "campers" in the 100 euro hotel. We both bailed because of the heat
As we headed from our hotel towards the river, and our path to Frankfurt, Dodie suddenly pulled up. She had spied a Canadian flag on a bike parked at a cafe. The cyclist behind the flag was indeed born in Canada, but currently lives in Switzerland. Still, we enjoyed talking, because like Franceska yesterday, he and his buddy were really packed and had interesting extraneous stuff hanging off their bikes. In short, "real" tourers, rather than the Guesthouse jumpers that we ourselves seem to be becoming!
One of the hallmarks of a "real tourer" may be the mascot. Perhaps real tourers are spending longer on the road, and get lonely, but these often take the form of a stuffed animal. We did have that in the past, including a big stuffed dog that we found on a fence in Quebec. Here is the Canadian/Swiss guy's mascot, followed by that of Franceska from yesterday. We ourselves are reduced to mascot "tokens" - Dodie has a metal keychain turtle, denoting her ultra slow status, and I have a Pope Francis medallion. Francis joins St. Christopher in a supervisory capacity, since Christopher did a questionable job for me in Florida.
Our path led right by the camping that we would have stayed at yesterday, had we not been so hot. Shortly after that, we arrived at the river Main, and said goodbye for now to the Rhine. The Main joins the Rhine in a very calm and non-dramatic way, not really befitting its long journey from beyond Bayreuth, in the East.
From this point (until well past Frankfurt!) the Main radweg is quite boring. That probably accounts for the inclusion of this story: In Mainz there is a statue of St Boniface. This means something to us, because we lived for some years in Winnipeg, which has a major suburb called ...St Boniface. Apparently St Boniface is well known hereabouts, and we found a marker along the path (in Hochheim) that says his body passed this way in 754 as it headed to the saint Peter and Paul church in Fulda. Fulda is famous of course, because the (live) bodies of Ken and Trish Graham passed by there as recently as August 6!
Hello river Main. This is where the Main calmly joins the Rhine
As planned, we took to the bank of the Main opposite Frankfurt, so as to give the city a miss. On this opposite bank we did find something interesting, in the form of a series of kids' activities, strung out along the bank. This was not crafts or music or anything like that, but active stuff like bouncy surfaces, sand boxes, climbing, and sliding type things. We learned that this is set up each year by an outdoor activity association. All the things are free, and looked like great fun.
As we slowly cycled or walked by, I snapped a shot of a fellow with a Dutch style front loading kid carrier bike (this one electric to boot). In the carrier, two kids were asleep, their little heads slumped left and right. Later we ran in to the same father and kids, plus Mom, and had a nice chat about kids on bikes, touring in Germany, where to go in Germany, etc. etc. The man spoke excellent English and had a good appreciation of what cycle touring is all about. He was one of many articulate and friendly people we have met here, and it was great talking to him and Mom (but not kids - who barely wioke up if at all - they had been playing hard at all the activities.)
What strength we had gained from a little lessening of the maximum temperature today, we lost to a moderate head wind. so we were soon looking for the next camping. The one we found was in Burgel, which is just beyond Offenbach. The sign at the front says it was established 1923. While not really that extreme, it did seem to us that the facilities had not been renewed too much after that date. The cost of 19.50 euros was high too, for so little on offer in terms of facilities.
Aside from the few facilities, we were a little perturbed by just how close our fellow campers chose to situate their tents to us. There must be a personal/tent space difference between Canadians and Europeans. They'll be sorry, though, when Dodie turns on her bedtime smart phone renditions of Agatha Christie novels, featuring David Suchet speaking English with a supposedly Belgian accent!
For an hour, planes heading for Frankfurt (Kelsterbach) showed us the way to go.
