TdE - Day 29 Umkirch - Saint Hippolyte

Route: Umkirch - Breisach (New &Old) - Colmar - Route du vin - Saint Hippolyte 
Distance: 85 km
Elevation: 469 m
Duration: 5:26 h
Weather: generally sunny with some clouds, plus one major downpour in Colmar

Today I entered the last new country of this trip: France!

And this was probably the last time I see the Rhine before joining it again at home in Leiden. 

From here onwards I plan to follow EuroVelo 5 all the way to Brussels and then see from there how to get back to Leiden.

My first stop was Neuf Breisach, a fortified village constructed as the ideal garrison, and on the plan it is interesting and still totally maintains this form:

But in reality at least inside it looks like a very depressing, small town. Not very well maintained. What was impressive though were the fortifications:

My next stop was Colmar, a city that I already visited in the past. I had hoped for a bit less tourists due to Covid travel restrictions on non-Europeans, but no, the city was pretty packed with tourists. So I wonder how it looks like normally when also all the international tourists are there! But it looks nice:

One can already see in this picture that it was starting to rain. At that moment it was more like a drizzle, but as it became stronger I searched for a hiding spot and luckily found one under a roof in front of a Fnac. Not totally ideal, but it protected me from the ensuing downpour, that within minutes transformed the street in front of me into two, small, rivers. So I had a forced stop at Colmar for about 45 minutes, and not in the absolutely nicest place of town, but at least reasonably dry. 

After Collar I first encountered the cycle path that should bring me closer to home. Here it generally does NOT go through all the small villages but instead stays somewhere below them, so I had tweaked it to go through the villages. Tomorrow instead I plan to follow it a bit more strictly, also because tomorrow it actually does go through the main villages! 

All these villages now in my head kind of combine into one, with a city gate (often looking quite similar)…

… old, half timbered houses…

.. and often a main square:

But quite arbitrarily some of these villages (e.g. Riquewihr) we’re totally flooded with tourists, others such as Turckheim or Bergheim had hardly any (in comparison), but looked pretty similar ‘, except the absence of all the tourist shops.

TdE - Day 28 Donaueschingen - Umkirch

Route: Donaueschingen - Black Forest - Umkirch
Distance: 74 km
Elevation: 705 m
Duration: 4:32
Weather; cloudy , a little bit of sun, but no rain, 20 C 

Today was probably the day where I climbed the highest mountain I ever climbed with a bicycle. Luckily already Donaueschingen is pretty high, so it wasn’t that crazy amount of climbing too reach over 1,000 meter above sea level. But still, pretty proud of my achievement and the views I was recompensed with:

The climbing started straight away from the hotel and also very quickly the region becomes very sparsely populated. The route today I had planned entirely with Komoot as I hadn’t found any official cycling path crossing the Black Forest at this angle, but while riding I was always at the lookout for cycling signs and if I found one that went into my direction I changed to that option instead of my planned route. 

This also brought my to this straight, maybe 10 km long, gravel path through the forest. Very lonely there…although I did encounter one woman doing Nordic walking.

I took the climb slowly and after a while I found a nice bench and had a pear I had bought about a week ago in Wellheim! It was nicely juicy, exactly what I needed.

Although the temperature has gone down compared to the heat a few days ago, all that climbing still made me quite thirsty, and I quickly finished my first bottle of water. But I have always 2 bottles, plus this time I bought an extra bottle of sweet ice tea as well. But when bottle 1 gets empty a slight panic sets in searching for a source of water. Which in retrospect yesterday was totally unnecessary, but well, that is the benefit of hindsight. I was really quite afraid of not meeting another soul for the entire day and even was quite worried if I would be able to find something to eat. 

When I planned the ride yesterday I checked restaurants  on the route and did find some, but many were closed in the day, or only item on the weekend. But I saw 2 that should have been open. So they were my goal for lunch. I even planned an alternative route and reserved and alternative hotel in Titisee just in case I was not able to find anything to eat, or the weather would turn to the worse. Talking about the weather, the forecast again was much worse than reality. Per the forecast it should have drilled all morning and there was even the distinct possibility of a thunderstorm! Nothing of this came true and specially on the decent I was very relieved that the roads weren’t wet. 

When I emerged from the long forest road there was a very tiny village, but with a production plant for some engineering. Very archetypical of Baden Württemberg! There I found a worker and asked him for a refill of my bottle. 

Not too much later I came to the highest point of my cycling trip (and I guess it will stay the highest point for a long time), 1040 m! And right there at the mountain station of a small T-bar lift I had lunch in the first restaurant that per my search should have been and actually was open!

After lunch the first, not long decent started, and I noticed that descending isn’t that much fun either if it is too steep. I was essentially on the breaks the WHOLE time! Sometimes I looked at the speed on Garmin, and I was kind of going at 20 km/h okay and when it got up to 30 km/h that was really the maximum I could live with. So my admiration of professional cyclists who decent at 80, 90, 100 km/h had grown a lot. And also all the non professional cyclists who would be laughing about my attempts to get down a mountain. It just feels very sketchy to decent on two small wheels a road that is only going down and down. 

This first decent wasn’t too long and so there was a bit more climbing to be done, but quite gentle. And with nice, typical Black Forest farmhouses dotted across the hillside. 

Today and yesterday were also one of the few days were I saw cows grazing outside. Such a normal view in the Netherlands, in Germany it seems that most cows are indoor dwellers and the fields are only used to grow crops. But here in the Black Forest the hillside is too steep and probably the ground not fertile enough, so that there is only grass for cows too munch on:

After this second, shorter ascent the final descend started and my hands are hurting from all the breaking. It was also interesting to feel that once down in the valley that then leads to Freiburg the temperature went up quite remarkably. 

I didn’t stop in Freiburg as I know the city and my hotel is outside. Also I couldn’t really have parked my bike safely in such a big city. 

In the evening I tried to clean a bit the bike from all the dust it has accumulated over the strade bianche of the Danube valley. 

Tomorrow onto country # 5, France! 

TdE - Day 27 Hausen im Tal - Donaueschingen

Route: Hausen im Tal - Beuron - Donau - temporary end of Donau - Donau source - Donaueschingen 
Distance: 80 km
Elevation: 408 m
Duration: 4:26 h
Weather:  Sun, clouds and sometimes a bit of drizzle, 20 C 

The highlight today was the disappearance of the Danube. And no, I am not referring to a place beyond its source, but somewhere midway through. 

But for a more logical explanation let’s start with the “source” of the Danube, which was my goal today. 

I put source in quotation marks, because neither of the two sources (!) I saw today is actually the source of the Danube. There are at least another two places that have a more logical claim to bring the source. And one of them is about 300 km away from here in the Engadin in Switzerland… normally called the source of the Inn. But where the Inn flows into the Danube it is actually bigger than the Danube. 

An other source is not so far away, only 35 km, and is called the source of the Breg. 

But the two sources I saw today are the more official ones:

#1 is the confluence of Breg and Brigach, which is an exceptionally ugly location:

#2 is the source of the Danube as defined by the local aristocrat who conveniently has it right besides his castle and decorated it lavishly:

The statue is of “mother” Baar (yet another affluent of the Danube) who explains her “daughter” Danube where to flow…

… only it seems the daughter didn’t listen too well, because after about 30 km the Danube disappears underground and only surfaces again a few kilometers to the South in the source of the Aach, which then flows into the Rhine! Or at least for most of the year that is what happens. The Danube gets completely dry, syphoning off all its water away to the Aach. Only in winter and spring the Danube has so much water that it can’t loose all of it and actually makes it to the Black Sea. 

In order to see the dry Danube, I hiked a bit into the valley. It is really surprising how quickly a relatively large river disappears. At some point one can even hear how it is going underground. 

But the day started in the narrow part of the Danube valley. After some kilometers I passed these sleepy cows. They were still lying all huddled together and the only sound came from their ears and tails flapping around. 

I also stopped at the abbey in Beuron. It seems to be very famous, but I have to say that I expected something a bit more impressive. Maybe it is important for a religious and not so much artistic reason. Although one has to admit that there is of the stained glass for the Ray of light was very effective.  

TdE - Day 26 Heiligkreuztal - Hausen im Tal

Route: Heiligkreuztal - Sigmaringen - Donau - Hausen im Tal

Distance: 47 km
Elevation: 409 m
Duration: 2:49 h
Weather: very sunny and again a bit hotter, 13 - 30 C 

Looking at the stats it seems that it must have been an easy day, but with the heat in afternoon, the gravel which was sometimes very loose and the elevation, which was mainly continuous up and down, it wasn’t so easy as it looks on paper. 

But I hadn’t planned too much riding today anyway, so I was able to complete everything just as planned. Including an nearly 4 hour visit to Sigmaringen, a city I had never heard about but that seems to be very important for German history, as one of the Hohenzollern family parts had their main castle there:

The origins of the castle are medieval, but most of what one can see now, was build in the 19th century after a devastating fire. 

And although there were not THE Hohenzollern (I.e. the emperors of Germany), they sure wanted to impress everyone. 

I did an audio guide tour through the castle, because the official guided tour had left shortly before my arrival. I did run into them several times, but it sounded like the guide was essentially saying the same as the audio guide. 

After the visit, I had lunch on the main square of the town, then bought some birthday cards for my mother and Matteo , wore them, posted them and then around 14:30 departed again along the Danube, which is becoming an ever smaller river. 

Again the landscape is very nice. I am getting so spoiled. Not sure I will be able to cycle with the same joy through the Dutch polders when I am back…

TdE - Day 25 Ulm - Heiligkreuztal

Route: Ulm - Donau - Obermarchtal - Heiligkreuztal 

Distance: 84 km
Elevation: 465 m
Duration: 4:42 h
Weather: Sunny but a few high clouds, warm but not too hot, 8 - 28 C 

Today I departed again on my general way back to the Netherlands. Still following the Danube upstream. I started in the busy city of Ulm where I stayed the last two nights in a hotel close to the station (but thanks to a strike of the conductors it was very quiet) and ended my day in a Cistercian monastery in the country side. A VERY relaxing place. 

My room (top left) is in the old monastery one of the cells of the nuns. The room behind the opened door. They have simplified a bit the furnishing compared to how it looked like back in the days where here Cistercian nuns where living, but not much. 

Even to get to the communal dinner I had to walk along the closer to get to the refectory: 

An extremely relaxing place in the middle of some nice rolling landscape. 

And it wasn’t the only abbey today. My extended lunch break was at Obermarchtal and its abbey:

I first had lunch in a restaurant right outside of the abbey, and then went for a visit. I even had the chance to hear a part of a guided tour that came through while I was visiting the church. It was a guided tour for religion teachers that were there to have some training. 

Also the monastery where I am now is still very much used for religious purposes, although there are no more nuns. Now they hold seminars and they seem to be quite religious, judging from the conversations I overheard from some neighboring tables. But they also accept tourists (mainly cyclists and hikers). 

During the day there were some other nice churches on the way as well:

As well as some reasonably nice villages…

Again today I started quite early (shortly after 8:00) to enjoy the cold (and yes it is actually cold in the morning). This seems to be a tactic that works fine with this current heatwave. 

TdE - Day 24 Ulm & Blaubeuren

Route: Ulm - Blaubeuren (and retour) plus some time in Ulm
Distance: 44 km
Elevation: 114 m
Duration: 2:46 h
Weather: Sunny and warm, 12 - 31 C 

When I was coming towards Ulm yesterday I wanted s as bit of a rest from cycling, so after considering a bit more after arriving I decided to make a 2 night stop in Ulm, so today I had time to explore the surroundings of Ulm, or as the German tong twister says: 

“In Ulm, um Ulm und um Ulm herum” war ich heute.

The main destination for today was Blaubeuren, a small village about 20 km from Ulm, that is famous for its small lake that is both the rich source of a river as well as the entrance to one of the largest under water cave systems in Germany. And it’s known for its blue color: 

I had visited Blaubeuren with my mother when I was maybe 10 years old and y mother still remembers how much I complained about the lake not being blue AT ALL! Apparently that day it wasn’t blue, but maybe grey… which was a huge disappointment for me back then. 

Luckily today it was BLUE, very BLUE:

I had a piece of cake in the mill right on the shores of the lake, then walked around the lake once and after that set out to discover the world around the famous blue spring. And I was in for another surprise. Right beside the spring is an old abbey, which started out as a Catholic abbey but since then change hands between Protestants and Catholics several times before finally remaining in Protestant hands. But one can still visit the monastery, including a bathing  house where monks were allowed to bath once a month. Which apparently was s as LOT in the “good old days”. Other religious orders were taking a bath only at Xmas and Easter. 

I took my visit very relaxed, but at some point I had seen everything there is to see in this small (but nice) village and then returned the same way I had come. 

The afternoon I mainly spent on a bench along the Donau in Ulm, reading a magazine and relaxing in the shade, before heading into town for a quick walk through the center. 

Ulm was probably a very nice medieval town prior to WW2, but except the main church (with the highest church tower in the world) not a lot remained. Although there is a nice view from the river:

TdE - Day 23 Dillingen - Ulm

Route: Dillingen - Donau - Oberelchingen - Ulm + Wiblingen 
Distance: 68 km
Elevation: 238 m
Duration: 4:25 h
Weather: very sunny and warm, 8 - 30 C 

As the weather forecast was again very hot, I decided yet again to get an early start. On my hotel sich early breakfast wasn’t possible, but getting a lunch packet prepared the evening before was possible, so I had a part of my lunch packet as breakfast and the rest during the day. 

I managed to get riding even before 8:00!

The first sightseeing point of the day was this partially reconstructed, Roman temple, reminding us that the Danube was already an important region in the Roman Empire.

When I descended a bit later into the floodplains of the Danube I again for a short time in the cold morning mist.

For my second breakfast I found a still closed Biergarten on the shores of the river:

The cycling path in the heat along the river:

My next goal of the day was Oberelching and its baroque church…

But for me the highlight of this place was not the church, but rather an extremly relaxing bench on a public terrace overlooking the entire plain of the Danube and, at least theoretically, looking into the Alps (but not today, as the air was too moist). The bench was hanging under a big tree, gently rocking in the wind.

I spent some good time on that bench, had the rest of my lunch package and finally restarted for the last few kilometers into town. 

I took some rest in the hotel and only later in the afternoon I road  the last few kilometers out to Wiblingen, another baroque monastery…

… with a huge and well decorated library:

While visiting the library I had the distinct feeling that I been here before, and Matteo when I sent him some pictures though so too, but I have absolutely no recollection when I were in this region of Germany, apart from the visit to Blaubeuren with my mother when I was a child… but more about that tomorrow.