Romantic Road (VII): Dinkelsbuhl

The next morning, I biked back into Donauworth, and bought a new tire to replace the ruined one. German bike shops are really good.

As the town name suggests, Donauworth is where the Romantic Road crosses the Danube:

The rain had stopped, but it was still dismal. I paused for lunch in Harburg, which was one of the prettier towns I saw. It has a castle nestled on the hill above the town.

The weather remained crappy as I biked onwards.

In the afternoon I reached Nordlingen. Nordlingen is kind of a hole. No, seriously. It's a town built in the depression left by a massive meteorite impact 14 million years ago. The impact created 72000 tons of diamonds in the area.

This was another day where I needed to cover a lot of ground: too much ground. I plodded on through the afternoon, but a lot of the riding was on hilly unsealed clay roads through forests. There must've been quite a bit of rain, because my bike became covered in mud, and it was really slow going. My tires picked up a thick layer of gunk that rubbed inside the mudguards like brakes.

It reached the point where it was so dark I was looking for a place in one of the forests to sneakily pitch my tent, but the need to find food meant that I pushed on and finally reached Dinkelsbuhl around 9pm. It was not a fun day. My tent was still wet from the night before and everything was covered in mud. I took a room at the first hotel in town (a converted 15th century farmhouse) and used the pristine white-tiled bathroom to scrub and dry my camping gear.

In Dinkelsbuhl, you can do a stroll through the town with the night watchman. I had been looking forward to that, but arrived too late and missed it. I had to settle for roaming the streets with my camera the next morning.

The Hotel

On the Romantic Road, a lot of the town fountains can be used for drinking water. This one in Dinkelsbuhl had a "nicht Trinkwasser" notice on it. What was their first clue?

Romantic Road (VI): What's a Donauworth?

On the way to Donauworth, disaster. I went over a bump and found my back tire again running along on the metal rim. This time, something had slashed right through my metal belted tire and the tube.

Is that Daylight?

I replaced the tube, but my only solution for the tire itself was to use an old emergency technique and duct tape a piece of cardboard into the inside of the tire and continue. Every bump I went over had me holding my breath, but it held for 50kms to the next bike shop.

I hope the Cambridge Thai restaurant still accepts their loyalty card.

The camping ground was 10 kms out of Donauworth, but I caught a train into town and wandered around the centre of the town at dusk.

The Town Glockenspiel

That night it poured down with rain.

Romantic Road (V): Rest day: Augsburg

Augsburg is the biggest city on the Romantic Road.

In the centre of Augsburg is an area called the Fuggerei, which is the world's oldest social housing area. Dating from the early 1500s, the rent for one of the houses remains about 88 cents per year. For the price that I paid to enter, I should've been allowed to stay for about 5 years.

It was founded by the wealthy Fugger family. If you're rich enough to build a housing complex, you're rich enough to change your name via deed poll.

It irked me a bit. Most people in Germany were really good about letting me butcher their language, but the lady at the ticket office wouldn't let me get past "Ich..." without making me switch to English.

The Fuggerei

Each doorbell pull in the Fuggerei has a different shape. Apparently, this was so that, in the pre-street lighting era, people could find the right house in the dark by feeling their way.

I went to the museum at the Fuggerei, which seemed a little off. It was in a subterranean WWII bomb shelter. Its two themes seemed to be the terrible damage that was done to the area by air raids in WWII, and how much Augsburg loved Hitler. It didn't engender a lot of sympathy.

The Augsburg Synagogue

Augsburg was a former Roman settlement, and has a really interesting museum of Roman archaeology.

Romantic Road (IV): Pfaffenwinkel District

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I got away earlier this time, but with the previous day's deficit, I needed to do over 100kms today, just to get back on schedule. I was off to a bad start when, 10kms down the road from the camping ground, my rear tube exploded. This was actually the first puncture I've had on this bike, so when I opened my spare tube, the rubber was suspiciously white-looking. But it held air and I plodded on through the Pfaffenwinkel district.

James, I hear you ask, are bicycle shops open in Bavaria on Easter Sunday? No, no they are not. Nothing is.

Along the way, I encountered the Lech river for the first time.

Here, a couple of other cyclists had also stopped. The guy said something about shitty photos (Foto schiessen), to which I giggled immaturely and nodded. It was only further down the road that I realised that schiessen is the verb for taking photos. The word I was thinking of was, of course, "scheisse".

I made it to Landsberg am Lech for a late lunch. I can't remember: some sort of spiced sausage? Mmm, more pickle.

Landsberg has a lot to see, and I was disappointed to only have time for a meal there, before jumping back on the bike.

Leaving Landsberg to the north meant riding along a bike path beside a motorway. I got lost here quite a few times; the signage was very confusing. At one point I went through an area with signs telling me to keep away because it was a Germany military test site. That can't be on the official route - it's not very romantic.

God knows how many people I asked for directions on this trip. The Germans are very patient and forgiving of people butchering their language.

It took ages to ride through Augsburg to the camping ground in the north of the city. It's a bloody big city. It was pretty dark when I arrived, and I had my lights on. A couple gave me directions on how to cross the autobahn, saying that I would need the footbridge. I was thinking that I would just whip across the road when nothing was coming, like usual. Apparently you don't do that with autobahns. Those are 3 foot high walls on the median strip and fences along the sides. Okay, I'll use the foot bridge.