Follow The Horizon

Km 1060- 73km today

We had a delayed start to the day today. Everything was packed except the tent, and it started to rain. Like everyone else we retreated to our tent to wait it out. Breakfast was apples and trail mix… we made up for this Spartan meal later 🙂 After about a half hour the rain stopped and we all scrambled to get going. Good bye to the worst campground we’ve stayed in so far. I’m almost ready to give up on camping, an you know how much we love to camp!

A little way down the road, I believe it was in the little town of Neuburg, we suddenly realize we no longer in France. Chris went into the little produce store, and I went into the next door bakery for something a little more decadent. All the food was now labeled in German. ” Is this Germany, uh, Deutschland?” “Yah” They were very polite to someone who was obviously an idiot.

As I stood by the bikes while Chris was still in picking a small supply of fruits and veggies, the old guy from the produce store came over to see what we were about. We established that I spoke no German, and he spoke no English, and I think that we were on our way to Frankfurt from France. This conversation likely lasted about 10 minutes,  and continued after Chris arrived, and while we consumed our apple strudel and chocolate croissants. Then he went to his fruit stand, and came back with two oranges and two peaches, and placed them on my pannier,  indicating that they were for us to take. We later realized he had given us the good stuff.

The riding here flat, and not very interesting, with many detours. We arrived at the campsite we thought we were going to stay at, but it was even worse than the last one, except this one had trees. After pausing to eat some fruit, I decided there was no way I was staying in another crappie campsite,  and we left to continue on to Speyer. We even tossed around the idea of shipping our camping gear home to lighten the load since it now appeared to be useless.

Speyer turned out to be worth the ride. Very clean, and even the touristy atmosphere was a welcome change from the last couple of days. By the time we were cleaned up, and ready to go out, most everything was closed, so we’ll have to wait until tomorrow. At least we had a great dinner.