Day 3 - A day full of Castles

Saturday, July 5th 2014  -  Day 3

Neckarsulm to Eberbach

56.9 km,  155.3 km so far

elevation gains:  417 meters

Tracks for today: Neckarsulm to Camping at Eberbach

Camping to hotel

Overcast with sunny breaks, temp from 20 to 28 

It seemed like every time we turned a corner there was another castle or church spires to photograph.  Here are some interesting pictures for the day:

A couple of fly fishermen 

Canoeists preparing to leave

More river traffic

You see a lot of stone walls

First of many castles and church spires on this day

If it wasn't castles, it was beautiful fields and meadows

Cool farm wagons

Another castle ruin

Another something in the distance

The name of the town we're looking at

Quite a crowd of tour cyclists passed us

Bench of the day

View of some river traffic from the bench

More river traffic as we go further

This isn't Bavaria, but wow, this one is for you, Steve Miller

Another great church shows up

More of our path for the day

Oh, this one will require some pictures

More lovely fields

And another one

And more crops, this time mustard or canola with what's left of an asparagus crop in the foreground

Even when we have to share the views with the highway, we have smooth safe cycling

They just keep showing up

This one had a particularly picturesque setting from the radweg so I have included a zoom of the other side of the river as well as a zoom out

So after crossing the cool bridge, we get a different angle

 We see lots of very neatly cut and stacked wood.  Steve mentioned this in his blog as well.  (Grampies go by the Books)

We checked out a campsite that we had intended to stay at, but there was no convenient way for us to recharge our batteries.  Electricity is available in the rv areas but not in the tenting areas.  And there was no place to work on internet either, plus with no breakfast included we basically said "Phoeey on this and made our way across the river and into town.  This is the bedroom of the place we found to stay.  Nice breakfast the next morning.

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After checking in, we got drawn to the cathedral by the bells

 Whatever was going on, some top brass showed up

We headed to a restaurant that was converted from a Roman Bath and had a really great meal.

 The house mushroom soup was really really good!

Gotta love those timbered houses

 Another interesting building

Note the date over this door

This is the building we stayed in with the restaurant out front

Our door into the building was in the back

View out our bedroom window.  To the left was a church with a bell tower that went off every hour during the night.  We both slept well, as we could only remember hearing two or three times during the night

Day 2 - Fields and a castle

Friday, July 4th 2014  -  Day 2

Steinheim to Neckarsulm

49.4 km,  98.4 km so far

elevation gains:  406 meters

Tracks for today: Svens house back to the radweg 

To Neckarsulm

Sunshine all day, temp from 23 to mid 30's 

Time travelling - 9:50 am - 3:45 pm

Time moving: 2 hrs 50 min

In spite of the fact we were waiting for keys to arrive for Erika's bike and then would need to charge her battery, the keys arrived at 7:30 AM and we were able to get a start on the road before 10 AM.

Back on the road, heading downhill for the Neckar

Back on the Neckar radweg

Wheat fields, towns in the distance

As we were passing a particular town which we could see had walls and towers, we decided to take the steep path up and into the town as it sat above the river.  What we found was enthralling:  castle, church, quaint streets and a lovely lady named Margrit.

The town's name is Besigheim:

Hopefully you can read the sign

This part of the Castle has been turned into a music school

Inside the church

We meet Margrit, who volunteers to take us on a little tour of the town

Pretty cool barbershop sign

"Downtown" area of town.  Margrit is writing down her email address for us

Margrit showed us a house that belonged to Barack Obama's 4th great grandfather

Barack has been invited to come and see his ancester's house but he has not responded yet.

Margrit showed us an easier way down to get back to the radweg

Further down the road we stopped in a shady spot to enjoy some lunch.  Erika took some pictures of the "cones" off a deciduous tree that she had always thought were little "pine cones" when she was a kid.

We saw lots of different crops, including alfalfa, wheat, barley, sugar beets, orchards, vineyards, mustard

When it came time to find a place to stay we called a place in Neckarsulm that I had written down from the Bett und Bike website.  They had a room available for 60 euros including breakfast.  So here are some pictures of places we visited in Neckarsulm:

The water is coming out of the hands of the mermaid-like character that the neptune-like character is holding.

Eis cafe of the day.  Note: I have been spelling eis wrong previously, so if I haven't corrected them all, it's Eis

Cool visual effect on these sculptures

Our room for the night

Breakfast next morning

Our hostess for the night