September 13, 2012
The Diet of Worms
It was a surprise when we went down to dinner to find Vickie and Simon there. They are a couple from Melbourne, clearly excellent cyclists, who started in Cologne and are cycling along the Rhine as far as Mulhouse and then intend going along the Doub, into Burgundy and hence somehow to Paris. Sounds a good trip to me.
We had difficulty deciding where to aim for today. Worms seemed rather too close then after that there appeared nothing with accommodation until Mannheim which we really didn’t fancy on bikes, then after that it seemed quite a way until we would come to a good sounding small place. We settled for Worms. The ride was through the rich alluvial plains that are between Mainz and Mannheim. The route was rather different though as mostly we had the river on one side of us and a narrow fringe of woodland on the other. It was unpaved most of the way and at times very bumpy but we really enjoyed it most of the time keeping pace with a noisy barge that was going almost exactly the same speed as us. We were beginning to despair that we would ever find a coffee stop when we came to the lovely neat little town of Hamm and there was a Bakkarie.
Getting into Worms underlined what a thorough job humans often do making a landscape particularly ugly. There are huge chemical industrial sites close to the river and the noise from the massive trucks seems to be deafening – our track wound our way through this. Worms itself is a pretty little town, when you eventually find the centre. It really is very modern with few old buildings, probably we imagine because its chemical industries would have made it a prime target for allied bombing during World War 2. The jewel in its crown is the Dom, St Peters which was built in the 11th century. It has of course undergone many changes over the century and has an extremely elaborate baroque choir. If you like me studied History at high school the thing you remember about Worms is ‘The Diet of Worms’ – its significance has long left me but I remember as fifth formers we giggled at the name.
Got very good accommodation in the very centre of town. With such an early finish we had hoped there would be a Laundromat in the town but that was not to be, so we just have to keep our distance from others.
Today's ride: 41 km (25 miles)
Total: 2,455 km (1,525 miles)
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