The lead up to the Danube River

..Back into Germany..

It was about 2 km before the Swiss / German border in Koblenz when we got approached by a 70+ year old female on an e-bike asking us where we were heading to.

She was full of admiration of what we were doing and we had a lengthy chat about it. She and her husband, who sat a few meters away on a bench having a bit of a rest, are obviously very active cyclists and have done many long and short tours together on their bikes in the past.

However, the admiration for each other changed at the point when she said that her husband is still fit enough to do daily tours at the age of 88… ‘Chapon’ to the gentleman who had a little struggle to get his leg over the top bar but once on the bike, nothing was holding him back any longer!

E-bikes appear to be a lot more popular on mainland Europe than they are in the UK and I would encourage anyone to get one instead of not doing any cycling at all!

..Schluechttal or not Schluechttal..

As we cycled into Germany towards Schluechttal for our camping stop for the night, our anticipation became bigger and bigger to get to the source of the Danube river. We were now only about 2 days away from it!

The plan was to take the Schluechttal road towards Bonndorf which winds up a scenic gorge on a pretty narrow road in places.

The owner of the campsite got us off this idea though! As it was weekend he said, this road was used by a lot of Lewis Hamilton ‘wannabes’ and it might be a bit dangerous to share the road with those!

And right he was too! Came 0730 AM on Sunday morning, we could hear at the campsite the revving noises of cars which sounded different to the engine noise of Fiat 500’s!  

Taking the route through the much wider valley towards Bloomberg was equally as enjoyable though!

Warm weather, the deep green colours of the woods and fields with meadow flowers in full bloom kept us entertained and the small streams flowing along the valleys were never far off our track.

Too nice to be true through!

..Few hills..

In Fuerzen, the cycle path took us along the old ‘Sauschwaenzle Bahn’ (pig tails railway), which required half of our two person team to walk a considerable distance!

The railway got its name from the circular tunnel which was built between 1887 – 1889 to gain height!

Never mind! The downhill which followed was enjoyed to the maximum, or in other words, exactly until we got to the t-junction where we had to turn right towards Blumberg and looked up the next hill…

This one was, in cyclists jargon, a real ‘stinker’ or ‘leg burner’! The sign on the bottom, saying it was 15% in gradient makes cyclist on heavy touring bikes fret!

With all the high notes I keep singing about European cycle paths, this 1.5km of very steep, two lane road, had no cycling strip next to it at all and this time, the 'full team' had to push the bikes up the busy road with its pretty heavy Sunday afternoon traffic; all to the amusement of most drivers and clearly to the annoyance of a very few others!

But wait, there is more: After whizzing down the Blumberg hill, we could see the road winding up the next elevation! I’ve stopped for Rebecca to catch up and got to talk to a local pedestrian. The elderly lady had cycled the Danube route herself and was full of positive encouragement about it, heighten our own expectations even more!

Less encouraging was, when she said that the hill we were just about to tackle will only go on for about 3 – 4km… Sometimes people’s guesses can be inaccurate and to our luck her's was too! After about 1.5km we had the long descent to Riedsee, with our campsite for the night, in front of us!

One more sleep to the first glimpse of the Danube…