September 7, 2011
To Donau worth: We are in Bavaria
It was raining a little this morning but nothing that our coats couldn't cope with. We had bought an umbrella when it last rained with the hope that that would passify the rain gods but clearly that hadn't worked. The ride out of Ulm is beautiful along the now really quite big Donau. It then enters some fairly extensive forests on unpaved but good tracks. At this point we were riding with two lovely young Swiss students who were using the last two weeks before University restarted to have a bike ride. The amazing thing was that one of them had spent time living in Papakura (a small town very close to where we live in NZ), she had been studying at a language school and had loved the horse farm she had stayed on. The miles flew under our wheels as we talked. They said that it was very easy for them to afford such a holiday in Germany as prices were so low compared with Switzerland (my 'coffee index' certainly supports this)
Then came a time for a decision, would we continue on the flat through more forests or would we take the route through a couple of small towns, this involved a bit of climbing and was a little longer. You will guess which I favoured. However bribed by Ken with the thought of coffee we took the hill route. Well worth it it was too. One of the things I like about the small towns in this area is they nearly all have town gates that open into a traffic free or largely traffic free town centre. Gunnzburg where we stopped for coffee was no exception. We have learnt where to get coffee in Germany and that is from a Backerie. The coffee always seems good, though not outstanding, is generally 1.8Euros for a moderately sized cup, you can buy something yummy to eat with it and get your lunch bread at the same time.
We are beginning to get used to the beautiful little towns and villages and the one we had decided to stop at after about 55Kms didn't seem quite cute enough so we decided to press on to the considerably larger town of Donauworth about 40km away. This was fine until about the last 15 or so km when the wind seemed to turn around to a powerful head wind and our speed dropped to a crawl. But we are here not feeling tired in a room above a restaurant with delicious smells drifting up
Today's ride: 95 km (59 miles)
Total: 1,843 km (1,145 miles)
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