The Romantiche Strasse ( “Romantic Way”), so-named after the whimsical ‘Romance Period’ architecture from 1750 to 1850, is basically a tourism marketing exercise. It’s supposed to be this really amazing cycle way, whereas in reality it is a car route with some sections of bike path strung along it. But for all that, it is quite interesting and I recommend you go there anyway.
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Thursday 25 April. Miltenberg · Rothenburg-op-der-Tauber |125 km|
The plethora of bike paths that constitute the Romantiche Strasse look like they were designed by a committee of non-cycling tourism marketeers. Every little non-descript village along the way wanted to get in on the act and have it’s own local version of the famous road to bring in the tourists, so even the road signs can’t be trusted. That’s my take on it anyway.
Some writeups have Tauberbischofsheim as the northern end of the Romantiche Strasse, so that’s where I headed. But once again, without any pre-planned route Ziggy was basically useless, as the wobbly track of the route taken again suggests. Ah well, my tag-line after all is “meandering the byways…”
No more hotel breakfasts for me! At 10am and about 20 km out of Miltenberg, I stopped at the church in the little village of Hundheim, below, just for a bit of a breather, and spied someone coming out of the little Metzgerei (butcher’s) across the street. I hadn’t even noticed there was a shop there.
So I went in and got myself some lovely curled-up cabanossi-style sausage, (curled up like an old-fashioned car spring it was) a small tub of fleischsalat (bacon with cream and dill) and one of lentil/ capsicum salad with fennel, and a bottle of apple juice, all for €6.10, and ate like a king. Sooo good! I’m going to try to do that every day (not the same food, of course, just the same concept of a late breaky of wholesome produce from the local shops).
At Bad Mergentheim I pulled in to Sycoo ebike shop to use their free battery charging station for an hour or so, and ended up spending €24.90 on a new mirror to replace the one that got broken in the storm last night. Sad to say, I also bought a yucky half roast chicken from the Turkish van-man outside Sycoo. So much for my healthy eating resolution!
Some more unmemorable towns followed….
….until I meandered in to “Campingplatz Tauber-idyll” at Detwang, on the edge of Tauberbischofsheim.
I suppose it doesn’t look much to you, but this was the nicest camp so far: right on the cycleway (the one I should have been on, that is), friendly staff, well-organized, scrupulously-clean facilities and even a small store for basic necessities such as beer, milk etc. :
Friday 26 April 2019. Tauberbischofsheim · Donauwörth |134 km|
Now I am on the ‘Romantiche Strasse’ proper at last. But no sooner had I got moving along it than it started to rain gently but persistently. I didn’t mind though – I had my nice new rain gear on, and was thus impervious to any such trifling issue.
However, as the steady rain started to penetrate first my gloves and then my shoes and socks, I did begin to feel a tad miserable. I stopped at the village of Schillingsfurst for my morning choco milk and pastry at the bakery. It was 10° by their outside thermometer, and about 30° inside – I took a long time over my milk and bun.
This tiny little town surprising also has a tiny little Tourist Information Office, and the (not so) tiny little woman there was actually quite helpful (unlike nearly all the others I’d come across so far). She explained how the Romantiche Strasse is all geared for travelers by car, and suggested I keep to the Wörnitz Radweg, clearly marked with distinctive red signs, and gave me a decent map to follow (all the other tourist information office maps I’d been given were utterly useless). It turned out to be good advice too, and I had incident-free navigation all the way to Donauwörth after that.
It continued raining intermittently for the rest of the day. The next significant stop along the way is Dinkelbühl, which is a very nice place indeed, even in the gloaming of the rain (or maybe that’s just because of my rose-coloured cycling glasses). An English couple who said they were travelling around Europe in a campervan “because of Brexit” (??) offered to take my photo. So there is a rare picture of me below.
I looked around for somewhere (free) to charge up, and the guy holding the fort in the local tourist office obliged, so I settled in to wait at one of the multitude of restaurants on the main street, all doing it tough today in the wet. I ordered what I considered might be local fare of “strength soup”, bratwurst with kraut and a jug of Radler for €15. The soup was superb, the sausages and cabbage not so much.
Dinkelsbühl is a photogenic town and must be seething with tourists during peak summer. Even on a cold and miserable rainy day like today, some bus-loads started to emerge for the obligatory snaps and souvenir-hunting.
Then came in turn the picture-perfect towns of Wasser-Trudingen, Oettingen (where I topped up on supplies – bananas, evaporated milk and tinned tuna), Harburg and finally Donauworth:
My overnighter in Donauwörth was the Kanu (canoe) Club. If it weren’t for the 2 tents there already I might have just moved on, but I barged in on a little group of canoe-club committee members and after the standard interrogation and form-filling and the handing over of €7, was told to pitch my tent wherever I liked. They had toilets, cold-water showers (not used that night I can assure you!) and a beer-dispensing drinks machine, so I was a happy-chappy (and at €1.50 per ½-litre bottle, doubly so).
My fellow-travelers for the night turned out to be a French guy cycling to Riga, and a dad and his 17 year-old son from Delft, Holland, (yes, Holland is a part of the Netherlands), who were on a cycling holiday to visit the 4 famous German automotive museums – the Porsche and Mercedes-Benz in Stuttgart, the Audi in Ingolstadt and the BMW in Munich (and then train back to Delft). I’d read that such a cycling trip was a thing.
Campsite at the Canoeing club:
-ends-
#54 Europe 2019
The Romantic Way: Miltenberg to Donauwörth. 259 km
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