Not the 50k day of cycling!

OUR ROUTE FOR DAY 3

The third day of our cycle tour around Bavaria was the day I wasn't looking forward to. It was billed as a 50k circular ride, which to me seemed pointless and a little bit too far. It didn't help that the cycling notes said there were more "ascents and descents" today - I was fine with the going down bit, but we all know what goes down must also go up, or something like that...

However after arriving at the very nice hotel in Bad Bayersoien the night before and having a rather large and lovely meal in the restaurant I reconsidered and maybe some cycling wasn't such a bad plan after all.  And you know what I was quite getting into this holiday cycling lark.

Our route today, as well as being more hilly would also take us north and through the unspoilt countryside and green meadows of the Pfaffenwinkel.  That's a great word isn't it? Pfaffenwinkel. It's this name for this corner of the Allgäu and refers to the large number of churches, convents and monasteries in the area.

We'd also be passing small pastoral hamlets and wooded areas and we were supposed to skirt a handful of small lakes - somehow though we missed these. Either they were very small, it had been very dry or we took another wrong turning somewhere. Yes probably the latter!

After helping ourselves to a legitimate packed lunch from the breakfast buffet we collected our bikes from the hotel garage and set off along the way we'd arrived at the hotel the previous day, over the Echelsbacker Brüke and on into Rottenbuch. Our cycling notes said it was a pretty town and if we didn't have all those kilometres in front of us I'd've been tempted to stop. But we did, so we didn't.

OUR FIRST SUNTAN LOTION STOP

The weather had improved quite a bit overnight too, and today was the first day we needed suntan lotion. Result. Or not, when you've got a 50k ride ahead of you.  So it was time to stop and slap on some Factor 50. Not a bad place for a suntan lotion stop.

It was also a bit of a day for tunnels, and tunnels under the roads - or subways as we'd call them, but smaller and more rustic. I lost count of the number of times we went through these corrugated iron clad tunnels, but they were quite an experience and you never quite knew what you was going to find coming the other way. 

With the tunnels behind us we found ourselves in this idyllic green space with only a few houses and lots of piles of logs - they're becoming a recurring theme on this trip!

We cycled on following the path, but not spotting the lakes the cycling notes mentioned. With no other obvious track to follow we carried on until we came to a small farm and a T-junction. After much consulting of the cycling notes and lots of looking both ways we opted to turn right and hoped for the best.

We soon cycled through a village not mentioned at all in the notes. We took that as a clue that we were going the wrong way and paused here with this view to consult the notes and turn on our technology again.

After getting spectacularly lost yesterday we'd resolved to check our location sooner if it happened again. I don't think either of us thought we'd be doing that so soon. You can see where we went off track on the route map above, that line heading west out on a limb. 

Heading back the way we came we cycled onto the village mentioned in the notes and phew, we were back on track.

The notes were right, there were more hills today. Some were up. And thankfully some were down. MOH's highlight of the day was the very steep section out of the forest which was steeper than I was expecting and so was in the wrong gear. Coupled with the fact that I didn't need my sunglasses on and hadn't had a chance to remove them meant I walked this one. I was glad though as it was steep even walking up it.

The downhills were good though, sometimes I even let go of the brakes! 

WOOHOO! IT'S DOWNHILL!

On the way back to the hotel we stopped at the Echelsbacher Brüke and took some pictures of the bridge that crossed the Ammer River and no doubt saved us plenty of cycle miles. It was built in 1929 and is 76 metres above the river. It's also the largest single span concrete bridge in the world.

THE STRIKING ECHELSBACHER BRÜCKE

I made a couple of photo stops on the now familiar route back to the hotel. I loved the shutters on this house but it was the saucepans and pots of plants on the steps that really caught my eye.

And outside the kindergarten in Bad Bayersoien these cycle and scooter racks looked so cute. It also underlined how engrained cycling is in the culture here, something we've moved away from at home.

Just look at the colour of the sky when we got back to the hotel. Beautiful. There was only one thing for it and that was to sit out on the terrace with a bottle of sparking wine and celebrate our eighth wedding anniversary from earlier in the week.  

And to try and work out how the 50k day actually turned out to be only 43.6km even with that slight detour.  And where those lakes got to!

So the stats:

Scheduled cycle distance: 50km
Actual distance recorded: 43.6km
Cumulative distance recorded: 134.3km
Times Google Maps consulted: 1
Shortcuts taken unknowingly: 1
Number of glasses of sparkling wine consumed: more than one!

Back on the bike and cycling to Bad Bayersoien

THE CYCLE ROUTE FOR DAY 2 

It's day two on the bike, and thankfully I'm not aching anywhere.  After a hearty breakfast of pretzels, cheese, ham and cake we were ready to set off.  Our ride today would take us to our next hotel, and for me that gave it more significance than yesterday's ride. I mean, there was a bed at stake in this ride!

We headed out of Füssen and along the shores of the Forggensee on the first stretch of the Romantische Straße (Road), passing the smaller Bannwaldsee and through a string of traditional villages.

The highlight of today was undoubtedly our visit to the Wieskirche or Church in the Meadow, and it really did seem to appear out of nowhere. 

But anyway, let's start at the beginning; we got another glimpse of the Neuschwanstein Schloss as we left Füssen, there was still some mist but less than when we visited, and it still looked very fairytale.

We cycled over open rolling hills and through woodland tracks and at one point we found ourselves cycling through a field of horses and cows. I planned to stop and get a picture but in the end I didn't as the horse below was advancing towards me.  I'm not sure if he just wanted his photo taken, or was walking that way anyway but I'm quite proud of this photo which I snapped as I wheeled past him!

We left the field and headed up the track - we needed to get a move on too, as the farmer who'd opened and shut the gate for us was coming up behind on his tractor - no pressure! We spotted a passing spot and pulled in as he chugged up off the hill, and as we were stopped it was a good opportunity to take a shot or two and to put the camera away safely.  Much better than having it dangling from my wrist as I cycled.

This was where we stopped for lunch, not a bad view is it?

It was just before lunch that I did the incredible. That was to overtake someone while going up hill! MOH had blasted by this couple just moments before as he's not so good at going slow, and initially I hung back as I wasn't sure if I would make it. But it turns out I couldn't go that slow either and rather apologetically overtook them. Definitely a cycling highlight for me, and one of (understandable) shock for MOH too.

We realised as we ate our lunch that we weren't far from the Wieskirche, as there were people wandering past us into the forest not dressed as you would be for a walk in the woods. And sure enough it wasn't long before they were walking back past us again.  

VIEW OF THE WIESKIRCHE EMERGING FROM THE WOODS

The church itself was amazing, you can read more and see photos from our visit here - Wieskirche: ornately decorated and completely unexpected.  Although it would have been nice to spend more time here, we were conscious that we still had a fair way to go before we reached Bad Bayersoien so we headed off through the car park and back onto country lanes. It was turning into a day of horses, as at a map check stop we found ourselves being watched by this sad looking one.

The route notes gave us two options further into our ride; one was along a very narrow track parallel to the main road and the other was slightly longer and avoided the narrow track. Well I thought, how narrow can that track be so we headed for option one. It turns out it can be quite narrow!  

About a bike wheel narrow.

I'm sure it wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't've been raining, and the knee-high grass either side of the narrow track wasn't wet. But it had been raining and at the end of the narrow track I wasn't very popular with MOH as we were both a little wet... 

But it was great fun!

It was after the narrow track that somewhere we got lost. We didn't realise at the time just how lost, and so we carried on regardless. Like you do. And mostly we were able to spot things that tied up to the cycling notes we had. The photo below - where I'm not looking very sure about things at all, let alone the German cow behind me - was MOH's attempt at placating me and persuading me to cycle up a very steep hill. I think I was actually hoping to find an ice cream stall nearby, it would have been a perfect spot - but sadly I was disappointed.

Well we went up that steep hill, I'm pretty sure I didn't cycle most of it and on we went still unsure. We reached a crossroads and headed straight across, swayed by the group of walkers that had just emerged from the path. The track took us down a steep and muddy hill, neither of us were convinced this was right, but still on we went. We emerged from the woodlands after a while and going up yet another hill there was another crossroads. We ummed and ahhed and chose to turn right; but that was wrong. We knew it was wrong when we ended up back at the top of that muddy hill again!

At the bottom of the muddy hill again, this time we chose another direction. We weren't convinced we should have gone down the muddy hill once, let alone twice but there was no way I was going back up it on my bike or otherwise, so on we went. We ended up on a circular route spotting more and more of these German cows, each time MOH was convinced we'd been here before - but we hadn't. My German was good enough to determine that it was a circular route, but he wasn't convinced. In the end we found a bench, sat down and turned on our mobile phones to find out where we were. We were that lost and the map we had was too high-level to be of any use.

Google gave us the good news that we were only 3km from Bad Bayersoien. Phew. Our challenge was to correctly identify which way to cycle!  We made our choice and headed off and then quite soon oddly found the cafe mentioned in the cycling notes, and it was here peering into the rabbit hutches or actually over the top of them that we spotted the Echelsbacher Brüke - the largest single span concrete bridge - over the Ammer Gorge below. You can't imagine how pleased we were.

Now we just had to work out how to get down there. There was a footpath along the edge of some fields and we headed off that way; it was fine to start with as the path was enclosed but as it opened up into the field the rain on the grass made cycling tricky. With our target in sight and not wanting to go back uphill we carried on on foot and made it down to the main road.

Across the bridge and we were back on track; it was slightly hairy being overtaken on the bridge by a tanker, but no worse I'm sure than cycling in London traffic.  Soon though we were back on the cycle paths and heading towards the hotel - they couldn't have known just how much we needed this welcome drink. Cheers!

So the stats:

Scheduled cycle distance: 39km
Actual distance recorded: 45.3km
Cumulative distance recorded: 90.7km
Times Google Maps consulted: 2
Number of horses encountered: 2
Number of German cows encountered: numerous
Number of people overtaken going uphill: 2!!
Number of sparkling wine consumed: just 1 glass... sadly!

Wieskirche: ornately decorated and completely unexpected

We visited the Wieskirche on our second day in Bavaria, and I'm skipping ahead a little and sharing pictures from there ahead of the day's cycling, It deserves it's own post as it was so breathtaking and stunning and completely unexpected.

We arrived just after lunch and emerged from the woods to see the UNESCO protected church in the distance. We approached the Wieskirche through open countryside and not through the tourist coaches and everything that goes with them which we saw later on the far side of the building.

The large oval church dates back to 1754 and was built to house the dilapidated wooden figure of the Saint of the Scourged Saviour. Several years before in 1738 tears has been seen on the figure, then housed on a small farm and so a small chapel was built to house it. The Wieskirche was built as the resulting pilgrimages meant that small chapel was quickly outgrown.

We quickly spotted where to park our bikes - yes even here, there was a bike stand - and headed towards the church.

We soon realised this was likely to be something special when we spotted the amount of detail on the outside.

But neither of us were quite expecting this:

Well you wouldn't expect that of a church in a meadow (or Wieskirche) would you?

The German architect Dominikus Zimmerman designed this church and his brother Johann Baptist, the fresco master, helped created the lavish interior of the late Baroque church. In 1983 it was named a UNESCO World Heritage site and underwent extensive restoration between 1985 and 1991.

The detail of those silver candlesticks were amazing, and I'm sure they're not light either!

The organ - above the door we entered - was equally as ornately decorated but seemed to go unnoticed by many of the people there the same time as us; they certainly missed out.

With all it's ornateness it was reassuring to sit in plain wooden pews, and a shame that these were bearing the marks of previous visitors.

Back outside we headed down towards the throng of tourists mainly to explore some more. I was pretty taken with the tiling on the roof of the Gasthof, but as we'd already eaten we didn't stop.

Having got as far as the car park we headed back to where we'd left our bikes, but not without visiting the small chapel first.

Back at the bikes it was time to get back on the saddle and pick up our route and follow the directions to our hotel for that night, I'll share more about the cycling from day 2 later in the week - but even now looking back at those photos I'm still amazed at how beautiful the Wieskirche was, and how totally unexpected it was!