Obstacle #137

A highway underpass near
Vilshofen. Try to picture me pushing
bike & trailer up this ramp.

Evening, July 1 at the Georgenhof, a modern inn in the fields south of Deggendorf.

I had been stiffed by the tourist office in Deggendorf - they sent me 4km down the road to a place that had nicht zimmer frei.

As seems to happen, a better place showed up around the corner

The Regensburger Dom (dom = cathedral)

I like the grey building with
two blotches of primary colours.

July 3 Morning

I did a laundry this morning.
Also bought new tires
for Ramorgue.


It was really hard to find the laundromat. I think laundromats carry a bit of stigma in parts of Europe. Only 'guest workers' and transients (that's me) use them.

Evening of July 3: Kelheim after a short half-day's ride (on account of my morning in the laundromat).

On a hill above the town, is this magnificent memorial, the Hall of The Liberation, commemorating the victory of the Germans over Napoleon. It was built by King Ludwig I of Bavaria, father of mad king Ludwig II. Extravagent projects ran in the family.

I took this curious footbridge over to the west bank of the Altmuhl.
I'm quite sure the sag was part of the design, not result of poor engineering. (There's no 'poor engineering' in Germany)

On the far side I took a narrow steep road that climbed up through the forest. It was around here that I'd planned to meet up with the Roman Wall.

Finding and following the wall
wasn't as easy on the ground
as it was on Google Earth!

Look closely. It's over there!

I ended up 'sort of ' following it.

June 5

Ian MacNiell, signing my book.

I was surprised on my
way to breakfast,
to hear, in English
"May I join you?"

Ian was a guest of the groom's family at the wedding.

Ian's a fellow Canadian, a professor in statistics at University of Western Ontario. Well, it turns out statistics is one of my interests (as a sub-amateur) so I was eager to hear about what he was doing in Europe. He had been addressing
several conferences on the topic of global warming, his
area of interest being detecting 'tipping points' where a
new set of variables starts to dominate a mathematical
climate model.

Another of my favourites

Ombau, an unmodernized farm village perched on a slight rise in the marshland .

I passed through Darmstadt on the morning of the 9th.

Here I crossed, again, my 2008 route. That year I rode through town, going south to Stutgartt, on my first day out of Frankfurt.

A unique sculpture in a park in the centre of town. It commemorates a well-loved local satirical play, the "Datterich" wriiten in the 1840's in Darmstatdt.

On the west side of town my route followd a long wide boulevard through the suburbs and onto a plain that continued straight and flat all the way to the Rhine at Oppernheim, about 30km away.

The sign says "Kurhotel", a health resort. I doubt if these operations
would be allowed in Canada. Each hotel has on its sign a list of
doctors, in residence or, at least, endorsing the establishment.

The ailing rich come here to drink murky
hot water and, hopefully, go home healthy.