Distance: 107 km
Elevation: 305
Duration: 5:42 h
Weather: cloudy, sometimes rainy, 18C
Back on the road and bike. After a week of “rest” at my parents place, today on the second rest day of La Vuelta I continued my ride towards the Danube.
I explained my ride to my parents (and my father continued to forget it, so I explained it over and over again), but I got some good tips, e.g. Miltenberg, a small but very picturesque town along the Main, which is where I am sitting now in the oldest restaurant of Germany!
I started quite late today (after 10:00) with my parents holding awkwardly the bike in front of their house:
The first few kilometers were along the road I took to school by bike for many years. I stopped along the way for this Thai temple (it’s one of two in Bad Homburg):
Strangely enough only a few meters behind my school “terra incognita” started. It seems I never ventured beyond that point. But today I did. The general plan was to follow the Main river, but from Bad Homburg you need to get there first. I planned a basic route yesterday with Komoot. Wasn’t for sure the best route, but it got me to the Main. The nice part started once I had crossed the river with a ferry in Rumpenheim:
From there onwards I followed a bicycle path along the Main. It was well indicated but I also had my trusted Garmin to show me the way.
At about 25 km I took a relatively short break for half a sandwich brought from home and then decided that Seligenstadt sounded like a good next stop. I remember hearing that name as a child, but I somehow connected it with gliding not with a nice small village with a huge abbey and a very interesting garden, which I found by pure chance (the public toilet was closeby).
The garden was so interesting because it used vegetables and fruit trees with a clear decorative purpose.
But not only vegetables, I got a grilled sausage at a local butcher’s. Tasty and quick. The weather looked as if it was getting worse over time, so I didn’t want to spend too much time on lunch today.
After this stop I continued along the river. Twice today it rained. Once it wasn’t actually that bad and a tree provided sufficient cover. The second time I got lucky and found the roof of an outdoor pool, without any guests and waited for the shower to pass. It was never a very long rain. From tomorrow weather should become better.
Aschaffenburg to my by surprise. I didn’t have any specific expectations and probably I haven’t ever been before, so I was very surprised by this huge palace along the river.
In Aschaffenburg the cycle way was a bit convoluted but I found my way back to the river cycling path.
At some point I passed an other solitary female cycling tourist (the first I saw on my trip), and later on she passed me (because I had been hiding from the rain). So I approved her and we road maybe 20 km together until the camp grounds where she will stay tonight. Nice chit chat. She is riding from Frankfurt to Nürnberg. So depending on the river side we chose tomorrow and our departure times/speeds we might actually meet again tomorrow on the road.
The last 20ish kilometer into Miltenberg I road again alone, before arriving at my hotel smack in the center of the village. (But I am not staying in the oldest inn of Germany, only eating here).
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