If These Walls Could Talk: Day 71 - Dinklesbuhl to Randersacker
I could easily cut and paste yesterday's verbiage, but I would have to put it all in bold and capitals.
Today was yesterday but amped up on steroids. We left Dinklesbuhl with blue sky above us but a light fog drifting through the medieval streets ... what at amazing feel it gave to the morning! Straight off we're riding through a beautiful rural landscape, the sun burns off the fog, and it seems like we're in paradise.
After a few more km's were approaching another walled town, Rothenberg on der Tauber. Never heard of it before, however a lot of other people have, and for good reason. It's mid morning on a Tuesday in the middle of October, and there are lots of tourists here. The vast majority are speaking some form of German and have probably come now to appreciate this jewel of a preserved walled town when it's not crawling with foreign tourist (like us!). It is a stunningly beautiful place and I can only image what it would be like in July or August. Fortunately we're here now. Unfortunatley we're only about 40 km into our day and have booked a hotel in Randersacker, another 60 km down the road.
We poked around for an hour or so, but could have easily spent a day, or more, exploring this town. Put it on the list for next time (and there may well be a next time ... we've been thinking about a route starting around here and going south to the boot of Italy ... watch this space!).
The rest of the ride was simply amazing. I know I'm repeating myself, but it was spectacular riding as we crossed over into the Main river drainage. As we were approaching Randersacker (and the main city in the area, Wurzburg) we were soon cycling through very step walled vineyards. This area is the heart of the Lower Franconian wine region (probably unknown to most North American's) and we've been drinking Fanconian wines for the last few days ... with no ill affects! Quite the contrary in fact.
We checked into our small hotel / pension, more rustic than what we had last night but clean and comfortable with very friendly proprietors. SO friendly that one of the first things we were shown was the self serve (honour system) beer fridge in the check in area! Nice touch ... end of the ride beer while we're still in our sweaty cycling stuff!
Dinner was at a Winestube about 100 m further down the road. Traditional Franconian meal. The now ubiquitous Kurbis soup (some variation of pumpkin!) good filling meat potatoes and two veg type stuff, with a couple of glasses of very very local wine. All is good in the world!
Tomorrow we'll take a ride north a few km's into Wurzberg and then head west towards Frankfurt and Mainz along the Main river. Three biking days left!
Here comes the Sun ... a classic George Harrison Beatles tune
After leaving Dinklesbuhl, the morning sun burnt off the fog and as the warmth hit us and our shadows appeared on the pavement, this song popped into my head ... and stayed there, just like the sun. Perfect.
Another day of early morning fog ... with blue blue sky waiting to break through
We're back in Germany where the e-bike is King!All through France, Germany and Austria, when we've seen folks over 40 on a bike (and there are LOTS of them), more than 50% have been on e-bikes. I guess it gets people out who might otherwise not be ... but when we see 30 (and 20) somethings on these ... I have a bit of a problem with that! In Slovakia, Hungary and Croatia (even Italy), these things were non existent.
We found this interesting bronze sculpture showing the old town. The walls we entered are at the up left, and we exited the town from the bottom right .. pics of that coming up
