The only day of climbing in the whole trip today: up to 500m or so, as I crossed the hilly country north of Würzburg. The prospect hadn’t exactly been keeping me awake, but I was aware of it, shall we say.
What did keep me awake, though, was a man shouting, singing and arguing with himself outside somewhere all night. In the morning the context became clear: he lived in a small group of tents in parkland opposite the hostel, and clearly had, as they say, issues.
At least being up early gave me the chance to do some trip-planning and accommodation-booking. My travel window is about two or three days ahead; I don’t book further than that so I can stay flexible around weather forecasts and how much I want to dawdle.
My half-seven start was just as well, given the slow and laborious route out of town thanks to roadworks and patchy detour signage. At least I got to see some of the excellent riverside cycle path, with its parallel pedestrian channel.
I had my now-customary morning coffee and pastry at an Edeka somewhere along my diversion. Then it was a long, steady, easy day of flat, flat, flat riverside and wide smooth tarmac. No more Romantic Road – that finished at Würzburg – but I’m back on the D9 route, which doesn’t finish until the North Sea Coast.
Progress was fast thanks to a tailwind, and the use of my bike’s big chainring – something normally as untouched as my dusters or ironing-board at home.
I stopped to admire Karlstadt’s central square briefly before returning to the sequence of back lanes with some views, upping and downing its way through villages up to the last, long, shallow, main-road climb to the village of Kothen. (Not ‘Köthen’, the town where Bach wrote many of his major works including the Brandenburgs, the Violin Sonatas and Partitas, and the Bad-Tempered Clavier.)
I saw some heartwarming sights on the climb up, such as that of jammed traffic at a standstill on the A7 motorway that vaulted over me on a viaduct.
The sun was out at last, and my Kothen campsite proved to be a gem. I had a delightful pitch on the little lake and enjoyed a pizza from the bakery opposite and some agreeably cheap and flavourful wine from the campsite reception. A relaxing end to another very satisfactory day.
Miles today: 60
Miles from Füssen: 297