Author: Rob Ainsley

A short, drizzly day of flat lanes across farmland and alongside invisible rivers. I left my campsite somewhere around eight, reducing its active population from 1 to 0. Breakfast was at Verden Aller, in the six-euro shape of a pain au choc and coffee in a Bäckerei, provided by a friendly and impeccably-dressed middle-aged woman….

Miesbach, 1999*. Crask Inn, 2013**. Minden, 2025. Once every dozen years, it seems, I have a Lost Property Disaster while cycle touring. But disasters which all get miraculously resolved. The morning was all going so well. Nice self-made breakfast in my excellent Airbnb apartment. Early start from a waking Minden. Fast, wind-assisted progress along the…

Hamelin council’s record on pest control is notorious. In 1284, the story goes, they commissioned a flashily-dressed ratcatcher to remove the town’s plague of said vermin. He did so, with his charmed pipe, but there was a payment dispute. In revenge, the piper similarly bewitched all the town’s children and led them away, never to…

Cyclists talking about their breakfast is something of a trope. It’s a boring, predictable start to a travel piece, and typical in the work of inexperienced writers. It was a rainy morning and after a hearty breakfast we set off, that sort of thing. However, Germany is a land of breakfast. So I’m going to…

Somewhere today, around Hann. Munden, I passed the halfway point of my German End to End. I’m enjoying it so much I’ll come back to do a Side to Side, which will therefore intersect this route somewhere around Hann. Munden. By then I might have learned what the Hann. stands for. It was a bright…

I slept deeply. For about half an hour. And was then woken by the roar of the motorway right next to the campsite. Hmm. I hadn’t quite expected a canoe club to be so well-connected to the transport system. But I was warm, once my compact half-season sleeping bag was assisted by hat, T-shirt, fleece…

My tent may weigh less than a can of beer, but it coped very well with the overnight deluge. I was dry and snug when I woke at four, and somehow managed to pack up all my bags – apart from the tent itself – from within the tiny confines of my OEX Bobcat Ultralite….

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…

Rothenburg ob der Tauber is not to be confused with Rotenburg an der Fulda, or Rotenburg an der Wümme. And note not just the ‘h’, but the ‘ob’: the picture-postcard Romantic town is ‘over’ the Tauber, whereas the h-less ones are ‘on’ their particular rivers. Rothenburg is high on a bluff above the Tauber, which…

A day of heavy rain, short distances, and my most expensive accomm of the trip: a guesthouse in the Old Town of half-timbered honeypot Rothenburg ob der Tauber. But it was worth it to have the place to myself in the evening after the tourist buses had gone, to have somewhere to dry my sodden…