Day 83: Miltenberg to Lohr

May 11, 2025

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AlsoGiven the tight confines of the Milternberg market square and high street, we wondered where all the non-cycling tourists filling the restaurants had parked. There are actually parking lots down by the river, but the true answer lay in the river cruisers parked in front of the town. These boats are huge - each like its own hotel or apartment building.

River cruiser - more like an apartment building.

As we were leaving town, we noted a gaggle of river cruise people trotting into the town. They must be the key to the town's retail survival.

Probably they had breakfast on board and are going sightseeing or shopping.

We were not the only keen observers of the scene - there was also this Black Kite.

While the Main was not showing us any "new" birds, there were really a lot of geese, many with young, all along the way. There were even two Egyptians up on the roof of our hotel.

In most places, the path really is beautiful. The Main Radweg rates among the best cycle ways one can find.

The river is beautiful as well, and see the geese just randomly out there.

There was also a Cormorant hiding in those rocks.

There were some pretty towns along the way, though given the longish distance we needed to cycle, we didn't pay too much attention to them. Below is a shot of Freudenberg.

On the Freudenberg bridge, there are some sculptures, depicting a Nibelungian type affiliation with witches, knights, and the like.

There was lots of text explaining the whole thing, but it was too detailed and anyway, in Gerrman.

with views of interesting red rock cliff faces

We reached Stadtprozelten, with its "Henneburg" castle. The castle is from the 13th century, but it was in a dilapidated state already in 1493 when extensive repair works took place. "The castle escaped harm during the wars in the following centuries, only being damaged by a thunderstorm. It was manned by just a few soldiers and parts of it were unused. This caused it to fall into a slow decay and by 1704 it was already being described as a ruin.

Works to save the ruin from total destruction were carried out for the first time 1840. In 1927 a part of the palace collapsed due to fireworks and a further collapse, killing 3 people, happened in 1978 as a result of a lightning strike. The ruin was then consolidated in the 1980s."

The river was beginning to be hemmed in by quite steep hills, that further on would be covered with grape vines. Here, I noticed that patch of evergreens shown below, among the deciduous trees, suggesting that the whole thing has been planted and managed over time.

And geese everywhere, with their cute babies

One lonely White Wagtail. Other than geese, there are not many birds to be seen.

At Wertheim, though we took this photo of the castle, we blew by without looking for the altstadt. And we did that despite a hankering for some ice cream.

Here are the steep hills, with grapes. It's hard in the photo to see just how steep the grapes are. Those two vertical cuts are stairways, the only way to get up the hills.

Also in the hills was this cement plant. I assume it's here because there is a source of lime.

The ice cream (eis) hankering was enough to have us pull up to what turned out to be just a pure beer garden. You can see that lots of other cyclists have also stopped, so that we would could call this a "radler treff" or cyclists' meetup. We are surprised that none of the beer gardens we have visited have sausages, or much of any food other than pretzels. This has hampered me as well with an assignment given by my brother: He had picked up a salt and a pepper shaker at a beer garden in Germany one time. They were only worth a euro, but did say Germany on the bottom, and he liked the souvenir, until one day he broke one. My job is to find a replacement. But you don't need salt or pepper if all that is on offer is beer!

After a beautiful but quite long ride, we rolled into Lohr, and finally found the eis we had been looking for. We also noticed several references in the town to "Schneewittchen", Snow White. I found out that the reason is that though Snow White is one of the folk tales collected by the Grimm brothers, it has a basis in fact. On June 9, 1725 Snow White was born in Lohr Castle. She was baroness Maria von Erthal. Snow White's father was in charge of the mirror and glass works in the region, and probably gave the "talking mirror" to the evil step mother as a gift. Snow White ran away from the step mother, and could well have been taken in by the diminutive miners, mining being a major industry here at the time.

Lohr castle houses a museum today, where one can see the talking mirror and also hear a Snow White actress reading her own story.

But now once again we have that Grampie amnesia. For years I had a Lohr a Main sticker on my pannier, depicting Snow White. I was impressed, because I got it for free at TI, and it lasted a long time. But despite that, I had to ask today "What's with Lohr and Snow White?"

Lohr downtown has some nice fachwerk houses:

Our hotel is just a little ways from the altstadt, and it's called the Bundschuh. The name confuses me a bit. I already know that "bunt" means colorful, but "bund"? Anyway, it clearly is all about colorful shoes.

Of course, the Bundschuh features a large room, duvets on the beds, and three bike garages, filled with bikes from the other lucky travellers on the Main Radweg.

Today's ride: 80 km (50 miles)
Total: 3,015 km (1,872 miles)

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Laura SeiditaNow you have me craving a good, fresh-made German pretzel and no hope of getting one!
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21 hours ago

Karen PoretTo Laura SeiditaAmazon! 😋😂
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11 hours ago