Day 89: Riedlingen to Hausen, Germany: Neither thunder and lightening nor rain nor heat....

August 16, 2012

With all the hot sun yesterday, we happily washed a bunch of laundry and hung it out to dry. So when around midnight we woke up to thunder and lightening, we rushed out to rescue it. We fell back asleep thinking there would be a thunderstorm and then no problem in the morning. But morning brought heavy rain, and we did our routine of lying there listening to the loudness of the drops and trying to guess when or if it would stop.

It became clear that the rain did not intend to stop any time soon. There was a covered shelter not too far away, so we launched our “pack up in the rain when there is a covered shelter somewhere” protocol. Actually, we did not have such a protocol, but we do now! While we at it, we also developed a “pack up in the rain with no shelter” version.

One of the tricks in the whole thing is that the Ortlieb bags, being completely waterproof, are a two edged sword. Keep them closed and your stuff is safe. But open them in the rain to load and any water that gets in the bag or that was on the clothes or contents will not only never leave but will make everything in the bag wet.

Sharing the shelter with us was a family from Spain. Sunny Spain. So they had brought little or no rain gear. Their plan was to huddle in there indefinitely, and/or get on a train outta here.

We however set off, smug in our full rain gear. The rain had a look at this and went into a routine of pretending to stop, long enough for us to get too hot and so take all the stuff off. Satisfied, the rain would start again. Finally, though, it gave up, and the weather had a try with blasting heat. We were ready for that too. Basically, weather (summer weather) can not stop us.

Rolling back through the towns we had passed on the way down river was freaky, not only for nostalgia but also because our recollections seem so fragmentary. One minute we would recognize nothing, and the next be in a scene that we knew perfectly well. Because it is a replay, I have not been taking photos in the same way, but when there is internet for uploading, this page will show a bit of where we have been this day.

We always said (since last October, anyway) that our plan after Vienna was to take a train back west and then to follow the Neckar to the Rhine, and the Rhine north to the Atlantic. However we were not exactly clear on whether we were “doing” the Neckar, that it, going from its source to it’s end at the Rhine, or just “using” the Neckar, hopping on it where convenient and then riding it from there.

We have picked up a Neckar bike route map, which acts to make the Neckar a project rather than just part of a route. There are 26 stages (map pages) to this project. So it looks like we will start close to the source, and go to the end, just like with the Donau. Tomorrow we will get on a regular highway to go from Hausen, to Villingen-Schwenningen. There we will start the river route. On the way we will pass through the major cities of Tubingen, Stuttgart, Heilbronn, Heidelberg, and finally Mannheim – where the Neckar enters the Rhine. It’s about 400 km. Piece of cake, eh?

Hey- we crossed over the 4000 km mark today! This trip is starting to get rolling.