2025 European trip

[Rynglieder]

Day 4 Aschaffenburg [D] > Klumbach [D] (c.155 miles)



Today's run was scheduled to be relatively short. Klumbach may not seem an obvious choice for my next destination, bearing in mind most of this year's trip was concentrated on the Alps to the south, however there was a reason for heading further west though Germany. As you know I regularly use Flickr for photo sharing, inspiration for future trips and just the pleasure of the quality photography that can sometimes be found. One user regularly posts pictures of his bike posed in beautiful scenery of northern Bavaria. I'd expressed my admiration many times and he suggested that if I was ever passing nearby, he would take me for a day's ride around his patch. This time I'd taken him up on his offer, so I would be staying for two nights in Klumbach.

The day started with a couple of hours of good riding mostly on open roads through countryside with the odd small town or village distributed along the route. By 10:00 I reached the city of Würzburg, picked my way through the streets and settled into a street parking spot at the rear of the Würzburg Rezidenz, a colossal 18c. palace. My parking place enabled me to approach it through the surrounding gardens before taking a full walk around the exterior with the camera.



At around noon, I let the Zumo attempt to take me out of town, but within minutes I found the depressingly familiar sight of barriers across the road. I tried a few back streets and stumbled into their twin. Once again it was a case of just working though those roads that I could, and hoping to break out at least on the right side of town. It wasn't too bad in terms of time or distance just the irritation of humping a heavy bike round in U-turns. I was soon out of the city though.

After an initial bit of dual carriageway dreariness, the roads settled back to a comparable pattern of those ridden during the morning and apart from being too hot under dull, humid skies, I was perfectly content.After a short while I arrived in Volkach, and trundled up into the Altstadt (old town) and found another place in the street to leave the bike. A walk into the market place rewarded me with a coffee and a few shots for the album.
By about 12:45 I was back on the road again. On reaching the attractive town of Schlüsselfeld a wrong turning set me back a couple of minutes, but was easily recovered. More agreeable cantering followed, a few spots of rain made a half-hearted attempt to clean the bugs off the windshield, but quickly gave up.

Next up, at about 14:00 was the historic city of Bamberg where yet another insolent set of barriers barred my intended road in.  Once again, there was no obvious diversion provided and I was forced downhill on cobbled streets between tightly packed ancient buildings, finally arriving by the canals that thread through the town as I had hoped. My intention was to pay to park the bike up in one of the city's underground car parks unless any motorcycle bays turned up. None were forthcoming though and there were queues for the underground car park but I was eventually lucky enough to find an unguarded area of cobbles to plant my flag.



There followed an hour or so as a pedestrian around the old town quarter. It really deserved more time, but at least I bagged the much-photographed Rathaus and some of the attractive buildings and canal side as well as securing another coffee before progressing onward.

The ride out was through the now routine mix of roads through the northern Bavarian countryside. Another set of barriers were lurking in Scheßlitz, but at least this time there was a clearly signed diversionary route, so no real harm done there, but I had barely got through the town when I was scuppered again. Now, the Würgauer Berg had not come to my attention in the planning phase, but it is presumably a hill of some significance and most definitely closed to motorcycles during weekends. I guess it must be an attractive road to ride, but the local authorities are tied of pulling people out of hedges when it is time-and-a-half or double-time pay. I threw a right turn as encouraged by my personalised diversion and set about the alternative. Frustratingly this simply led to another set of signs standing like a nightclub bouncer and saying "not tonight lads". Back the way I came for a mile or so, a left turn and a series of badly surfaced lanes and tiny communities before finally reaching some wider and smoother tarmac.

Back in the clutches of the Zumo, I let it carry me forward until the next road closure. At least tis one was a little less prejudiced, simply prohibiting all traffic going forward, so once again I select a right turn and random and waited to see what would happen. What turned up after a few minutes was Thurnau and as I dropped into the little old town, I had one of those moments where something unexpected and striking jumps into view that you just have to stop. I pulled over below an imposing castle linked by a timber bridge over the roadway to an ancient chapel. I suppose if the lord of the manor has enough money to construct a castle, he wouldn't want to be having to go to church in the company of the local peasants. After a swig or two from the bottle and a cigarette, I got on with it.



Beyond Thurnau lay a "dog-bone" junction of two islands either side of the [70] Autobahn. I'd lost confidence in the Zumo for the moment and with multiple diversions, was now fairly clueless as to my position in relation to where I wanted to be – like an aging hippy I felt the need for a sanctuary to Find Myself. I doubled back to a service station just off one of the islands bought another drink and considered my course.

Due to the Forbidden Hill I was well south of where I should have been and it seemed the simplest thing would be to hop on the Autobahn for a couple of junctions and get to my hotel as quickly as possible. It was still overcast and humid and a shower and a clean shirt were the two things I wanted most in the world in that instant. Having made my mind up it was a fairly easy run in. Klumbach was a bigger town than I was expecting, it was probably just my imagination but I seemed to have to spiral into the centre to get to my lodgings.

The Taste Hotel was a decent enough modern establishment, the best hotel of the trip so far which was a bit of a bonus as it was one of only two places that I would be spending two nights on this trip. With the coveted shower and change of clothes out of the way I took the opportunity to take everything except the essentials off the bike, it would be nice to be out on a lighter bike the following day.

I messaged my acquaintance to confirm I was in town as per schedule and available for the next day if he was still free. He was kind enough to drive over to my hotel in his car, buy dinner and a beer for us and give me a lightning tour of the town. It had been a change from my usual snack-bar type diet, having Gone Native and indulged in a plateful of rinderbraten.



After being dropped back to my room I went to message home and found that I must have left my phone charger and power adapter at the previous night's hotel. Something to sort out tomorrow...

[Rynglieder]

Day 5 Around the Franconian Jura (Fränkische Schweiz) c. 90 miles).



As promised, Gerd, my companion for the day rolled up at precisely 09:30 as arranged and caught me on the car park finishing off a cigarette. I explained my phone charger problem and sure enough, he knew exactly where to go, so we rode off for the local electrical superstore. Unfortunately, we were too early for their 10:00 opening so we agreed to bat it to the back of the schedule and push on with our road trip.

Today I would be following the tail light of a BMW GS1200 instead of the Zumo, something I had mixed feelings about. During messaging he had asked me if there was anywhere in particular, I wanted to visit, but I had told him I was happy for him to plough the furrow as long as we avoided lanes with grass growing up the middle and city centres. If he could throw in a bit of history, architecture or landscape that would be perfect.

I got pretty much what I had bidden. First stop was back in Thurnau, which I had stumbled aimlessly into the previous afternoon, but this time I was led around to the rear of the castle where a different viewpoint presented itself, with the fortress now being a backdrop to a small lake. Out came the camera again, same subject different perspective.



We moved on under largely blue skies with a scattering of affable cloud, briefly picking up a short length of autobahn to avoid the ubiquitous road closure which he was already aware of. My pursuit of the Beemer bought me into Königstein where we pulled up under one of the crags that this National Park encompasses.

We continued, sometimes in open countryside and at other times descending to gentle cliff lined gorges before arriving in Sanspareil. I experienced a moment of disquiet as we turned on to a gravel track, but it was only for a couple of hundred metres to enable me to get a shot of our bikes with Burg Zwernitz as a backdrop. Back down the track and we re-parked our machines and prepared for a short walk through the woodland at the bottom of the castle, picking our way through rocks sculped by the elements before arriving at the ruined remains of a small outdoor theatre that once entertained the castle's guests. The landscape, history and architecture boxes seemed to all have been decisively ticked in one stroke.



We continued to weave our way through the National Park for 45 minutes or so on a series of agreeable roads before briefly pulling up in Tüchersfeld where an impressive rock spire presented itself to my Pentax. Another gorge formed between sheer cliffs bought us to Pottenstein where someone had bagged one of the summits to build his small castle and give us tourists something to look at. After capturing that, we moved in to the village centre where there was time to sit outside a small café with a coffee.



Twenty minutes of glorious landscape later, Gerd took a short detour up a hill where a lay-by served a belvedere with views toward Burg Rabenstein and the surrounding countryside. It was the briefest of stop-offs, one of the more significant outlooks was an ugly looking storm squatting on the far horizon and I had a suspicion that it was the way we were heading.

Sure enough, a short while later we were throwing up spray from our tyres, but the roads were well surfaced and the bends were not too severe, so there was very little effect on our progress. Fortunately, my clothing was keeping the weather out, but my leader pulled us into a car park by the small St Rupertkapple where we sheltered in the chapel porch for a while as the worst of the rain passed.

Next up on my mystery tour was "Schlosspark Fantasie", a small stately home seat in public parkland where on most days, my personal guide informed me, I would be able to see the fountains at work. Today was not the day however and the fountain basins were full of Hi-Viz maintenance bods, not water.


We rolled around the city of Bayreuth on damp, but drying roads until we reached the Ermitage on the eastern side of the conurbation where we spent and hour on foot around the parkland with its cascades and ornamental buildings, taking shelter when necessary as the thunder started to rumble around us and doing what I could with the camera in the poor light.



I imagine our return route to Klumbach was, chosen for its directness, not quite as attractive as the roads of earlier in the day, but a perfectly acceptable ride none the less. Upon arrival in town, I followed Gerd up through some narrow streets that led to a viewpoint overlooking the roofscape and castle where he coaxed my camera from me and took a snap of me with my bike. I'm not of the Selfie Generation, so it's the one and only picture as undisputable evidence of me making this trip.



We dropped back down into town and wound our way back to Media Mart where I managed to pick up the necessary charger (at three times the price I would have paid in the UK) before I was guided back to the hotel car park to say our farewells. After getting changed and checking my weather app I decided to take an evening walk to find a meal and a beer, I didn't want to put the wet bike jacket back on. Inevitably, the gods seized their opportunity for some fun and as soon as I had finished eating it pi$$ed it down resulting in a one mile walk back in a very wet sweater. My beer was deleted from the programme.

There hadn't been that many miles covered during the day, but I had been guided to loads of places that piqued my interest and the roads that we had ridden were exceptional in the main. It's always slightly troubling setting out with someone you haven't ridden with before and one worries about them being too fast, or too slow etc. It had worked out perfectly; in truth I found I was slowing for the towns and villages much more than absolutely everyone else in Germany, but once I had passed the struck-out village name and back into the national speed limit, a quick twist of the throttle and I was in convoy once more.

Tomorrow held the prospect of a very different ride.