Part V. The Altmuehl Radweg

We left Noerdlingen On October 10th, having decided to not continue on the radweg to Dinkelsbuehl, but rather to head east on some small regional radwegs to work our way over to the Altmuehl River and its radweg of the same name. This day turned into one of the most unusual of our trip. The wind was howling and right in our faces as we crossed the flat crater floor. We stopped for a cappuccino at a restaurant that was filled with Sunday diners. We were placed at a table with an older couple. It was really fun trying to communicate with them in my very limited German. We reached Wemding where the plain ended and the hills started. We rode through the hills on walking paths that doubled as cross-country ski trails in the winter, thankful that we were now in a forest that shielded us from the wind. In Otting we came across an old castle that had been converted to a yoga retreat--wish we could have stayed there for a few days! At Monheim we turned north toward Treuchtlingen, but just south of the city we found our way to the Altmuehl River. We celebrated with a beer at an open-air restaurant. Then we found the Altmuehl Radweg and headed downriver. It was so nice to be back along a small stream in such a pastoral setting. We cruised into the small town of Pappenheim. (ODO = 52 km)

There we attracted to the Hotel Krone that had a banner hanging across it advertising fresh fish dinners. We checked out the room which was very spacious and nicely furnished. The dinner was outstanding! We had fresh trout and white wine for dinner. The waiter, the son-in-law of the owner, was very friendly and helpful, and spoke good English. We feel that we really happened upon a good place.

The next morning was completely sunny, still windy, but more importantly, it was warming up. We headed out for Eichstatt which we reached in early afternoon. I thought the town would be interesting, but it was stuffed with cars and was very noisy. So we headed down the radweg to look for a hotel that had been listed in Bett und Bike. It was called the Landgasthof Proell. It was the next-to-the worst room that we had on our whole trip. The manager was really grumpy, the room was like an attic, and there was no heat! But since it was getting late in the day, we had to take what we could get.

The hotel was alongside a very busy highway with nothing around it so we decided to eat at the attached restaurant, the Kartoffel Restaurant (a potato restaurant?). No one spoke English, but we made it be known that we didn't want any meat dish. The cook prepared a potato dish for us. It turned out to be a huge McDonaldesque hashbrown about six inches in diameter. Linda had thought it would be good because it came with a garlic sauce, but that turned out to be a solid cream sauce--not her kind of dish! Oh, well, you win some and you lose some. (ODO = 43 km)


Left the next morning around 10 am, but only got a few kilometers away before we realized that Linda had left one of her panniers at the hotel. After retrieving that we rode on to Beilngries where we found the Main-Donau Kanal. This amazing engineering feat connects the Main River which flows into the Rhine which empties into the North Sea with the Donau which empties into the Black Sea. It is 175 km long and drops 175 m from west to east through 16 locks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine-Main-Danube_Canal ).

We chose to ride along the north side of the canal to our destination of Dietfurt an der Altmuehl. The path turned into crushed lime rock and was very bumpy causing me to worry all the way that we might have a blowout, but we made it safely.

There were no recommendations from Bett und Bike for this town so we asked a man to recommend one. He directed us to the Gasthof Meier which was just across the canal. It was a beautiful site and we took a room in a new addition that was spacious and nicely decorated. While we collecting our things from our bikes a buld carrier river boat came by. (ODO 54 km)

We had bumped into a German couple from Hanover who was also biking on the radweg and they ended up staying at the same hotel. They left for dinner, but we decided to stay and get just a salad for dinner. Well, that turned into an interesting adventure. The proprietor, it turns out, was much more interested in watching a soccer match than making any effort at feeding us. And he was very hard to understand. He told us that we had one choice--a ham and egg sandwich, no salad.

The next morning at breakfast we told the fellow biking couple about our experience at dinner. They laughed and told us that they could hardly understand his Bavarian dialect and they were native speakers! (Later they told us that the proprietor had told them that we were very hard to understand!)

The next day was a pretty non-descript ride into Kelheim. We did see a cruise ship on the canal, crossed a lock and watched a ship pass through it, and then saw the confluence of the Atlmuehl and the Donau. We stayed in a beautiful old (500 years) building in the center of the old city, Altstadt Pension Dietz. The proprietress was very informative and spoke good English. The room was very interesting and the breakfast the next morning was excellent. (ODO = 37 km)

The next morning we set out on a wonderful side trip to Weltenburg Monastery upriver on the Donau. There are sightseeing boats that travel back and forth between Kelheim and the monastery so we figured we could ride our bikes there and take the boat back to Kelheim through a small gorge with spectacular scenery. We rode over a huge hill so steep that we ended up pushing our bikes part way even though we had left our gear at the hotel. But the ride was worth every bit of the effort. There was a layer of fog that gave the forest we rode through a very special light. We toured the monastery and then had a half liter of the beer brewed at the monastery--a task they have performed there since the year 1050! We figured that after a thousand years they must know how to brew a good beer--and it was.

We retrieved our panniers at the hotel in Kelheim and headed out for Regensburg. The countryside was mostly flat and not very interesting. I guess were getting a little burned out by now because we have no notes for this day's ride. The tourist office in Regensburg directed us to a hotel, The Friendly Turk, where the clerk tried to stuff us into a single room after we had reserved a double room. The sad thing about it was that when we were moved to a double room, it was the same size--cramped! (ODO = 47 km, cumulative = 812 km)

That evening we enjoyed walking around the old town for a little while and ended up eating at a Turkish restaurant not far from the hotel. The next morning we decided to drop the idea of continuing on to the border at Passau. From the map the countryside looked like it would not be very interesting. So we went to the train station and caught a train out of Bavaria and back to Baden-Wurttenberg, specifically to Stuttgart.

The really wonderful part of biking in Germany is that you can always take a non-express train with your bikes. You just buy a bike and a person ticket and get aboard. The train to Nurnberg was very crowded so we just had to shove our bikes in door of the train and stand with everyone else. But at 200 km per hour, it sure beats pedaling. From Nurnberg we caught another train into Stuttgart, after only four hours on the trains. We planned to head south from there the next day. We found a business hotel south of the city, Hotel Brita, a very modern three-star hotel in Oberturkheim, just as it was getting dark--and us with no lights! The room was very nice and warm--a fact that we really appreciated as it was beginning to get quite cold each day and it had started raining again. We found a grocery store nearby and purchased dinner which we ate in the room. (ODO = 13 km)