August 16, 2015
Day 26: Rothenburg ob der Tauber to Augsburg (by train) then to Graben
When we woke up it was raining quite heavily, and the temperatures had dropped nicely. Everyone likes that first cool rain after a hot dry spell, and so did we. For once we could feel comfortable. But of course we also knew that soon we would be complaining of being cold and wet, and be skulking into guest houses on that feeble pretext.
What's more, we decided to follow through on the idea of jumping a train to make up lost time. So we made our way around the Rothenburg wall to the train station. Since it was Sunday, there was no staff in the station, at least not until later in the day. So that meant it was us and the ticket machine, a match up that has not been too happy in past encounters. Fortunately this one spoke (or could be made to speak) English, which was a great start. We could not see anything about bikes in the menus, which simplified matters - ignorance is bliss. After some fairly simple choices and questions, the thing offered us maybe six different prices for the trip to Augsburg. The range for both of us was €28 to €64.50. Some of the prices seemed to require some sort of special cards or memberships, but we seemed eligible for the cheapest fare, and chose that.
The train showed up within minutes (there is one per hour) and we easily rolled our fully packed bikes onto the almost level entrance, We were able to place our bikes along the wall, where fold down seats would provide for either bikes or people to be there. Piece of cake - right? Well a lady came on with a bike just after, and asked if we had bike tickets. Say what? Actually the lady did not have such a ticket either. She said she had not had time for it at the ticket machine. It's in there somewhere, but not easy to find, she said. We are pretty sure it is not a question of buying a ticket for a person and then adding that the person has a bike. Rather we think it likely that the bike has to buy its own ticket. Oh well. A conductor did come around, but he only smiled at us, and neither we nor our bikes were asked for our tickets.
The train ride was not as easy as all that, however. To get to Augsburg required two changes of train. So our first splash of cold water was when we arrived at the first intermediate point and discovered that to change tracks we needed to descend a long set of stairs, go under the tracks, and ascend stairs on the other side. At this first change, a very nice young man carried Dodie's bike down and up, while I carried mine. The bikes are awkward when loaded, and the 80 pound weight was a bit of a chore! There was of course no opportunity or thought about unpacking, since the schedule that the ticket machine had figured out for us allowed 4 minutes at each stop!
Onto the next train, we now had more crowded conditions, with several other bikes already in place. It ws ok, because we all just jammed in. This was ok until a train employee happened along pushing a little cart from which drinks were being sold. He wanted to get by me, and insisted that I unload all the bags and put them in racks. I Ignored this, and simple maneuvered the bike in the car's entrance way enough that he could pass. Once he could carry on with his vital mission, he lost interest in any niceties about where luggage should be stored.
The last train was crowded too, but again good natured cooperation from the cyclists and other passengers smoothed the way. Again, even at the big town of Augsburg, the only way out was to carry the loaded bikes on lots of stairs. Being "young and strong" we handled this ok, but we watched ruefully as an authentic old lady with a cane painfully worked her way up the stairs. It seems if you have a wheelchair you can forget about train travel, at least in this region..
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Once popped out on the street in Augsburg, it was as if we had been teleported, which of course we had. The train is so smooth, it hardly felt as if we had gone anywhere. But in bicycle path terms, we had advanced 330km!
Augsburg is a big town, and despite the GPS, it took us a while to find the way out. The route loosely follows the river Lech, and for the first bit it is a gravelly surface through forest. It is easy to lose your way in this forest, which can feel quite remote. Last year, a girl on a horse appeared in the forest, seemingly out of nowhere, and then disappeared. We fantasized that this was a princess, or a magical figure, and kept looking for where she or her horse might have come from. This time we felt we had least found the horse, as we came upon three pastured by the forest. However they did not seem "noble" enough. Indeed they were
Przewalski's horse or Dzungarian horse, which is a rare and endangered subspecies of wild horse native to the steppes of central Asia. They were here as some sort of project of the Augsburg zoo. So this time, no princess and no horse.
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We did however get rough gravel path, mostly, until we came to a spot where - without notice, detour, or bypass - a place where the road and path crossed the train tracks was completely blocked by construction. This is very uncharacteristic for Germany, and we were very surprised. There seemed no way around the situation, so we moved along the track a short distance and made to carry the bikes over. After all, we had had the DeutcheBahn training course in bike carrying ealrier in the day.
The train tracks were on top of a surprisingly high embankment of loose rock, making for tricky footing. But as I say, we were highly trained already.
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We continued on the other side of the obstruction, wending our way through corn fields and past tiny villages. When the time came to begin thinking about stopping, we did pass several good wild camp spots. Two had crucifixes plus benches and garbage cans, and seemed quite welcoming. And there were another two that were way stations on the Via Claudia Augusta, the radweg we are following. These had pseudo Roman mile markers, and panels explaining about the Romans and their roads. We didn't stop, though, presumably because we had little or no water. But subconsciously, Guesthouse was what we were looking for.
This region and section of the Via Claudia Augusta - from Augsburg to probably Schongau, has little tourist traffic and almost no services. The many little towns are just bedroom communities - a desert to the cyclist. Finally on the trail and opposite one town we found a sign for a place with rooms, just 400 m off route. So we went off to find this, but found the place locked up tight. Now it was back onto the trail.
We began to think that this was one of the examples of where trail designers do their best to lead the cyclists away from the towns and the services they might find there. We were wending our way through one of these deserts, which are not only devoid of services but also seem mostly devoid of people - outside their houses or cars - when we spied a man on a bike. We asked him about a guest house. He spoke no English, but asked if we would be interested in a private zimmer - a room in someone's house. We said sure, so he turned himself and us off our previous routes and we headed back, ending at a house with a man sitting outside. Our new guide explained to the man that he had somehow found these crazy Canadians, and wasn't he right to think that there was a private zimmer somewhere near here - like it's the house next door, right?
The man replied that this was actually the place, but for some reason they were not ready or able to accept anyone now. Our man said, so what can I do with these hapless travellers? In the end a phone call was made to a hotel that existed in the next town, and a vacancy was confirmed. So our man escorted us to the edge of this town, and pointed out the hotel, across the corn fields, in the next town. He wished us good travels to Venice ( we had determined that he knew Northern Italy, having been there as part of the air force here) and sent us on our way.
The hotel was expensive, and we wondered how this could exist in the middle of nowhere. The answer came when we read the hotel's literature. This was a business hotel, just 15 minutes from Landsberg. 15 minutes? Well yeah - in a car on a no speed limit road!
Looking at the highway signs as we approached the hotel, we could see that the distance given to Augsburg was half what our bike computers said we had travelled, and indeed, the distance to Landsberg was listed as a mere 15 km. We strongly suspect that the Via Claudia Augusta has been trying to entertain us by swinging around every curvy indirect gravel path it can find. Thanks, we needed the exercise, I guess!
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Today's ride: 44 km (27 miles)
Total: 1,316 km (817 miles)
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