Danube bike trail Day 1 – Donaueschingen to Gutenstein
A late start today as I was busy trying to break the German PAYG SIM card cartel, every operator offered an identical 200MB for €20 so it is marginal with 3’s £5 a day offer. However, remembering Euan’s shenanigans with 3 in France I opted to go with Vodafone. Disappoingly I now find their network is mainly Edge with 3G only in the big places.
I started cycling and found the spot where the Brigach & Breg meet in quite an idyllic place, except for the bridge carrying the by pass a few metres away, immediately bringing my mind to the horror of Byrons Pool.
At least the bridge hides the huge sewage works discharging as much water into the nascent Danube as one of the streams.
The ride continues pleasantly zig zagging on smooth paths through fields.
The surprise is at Immedingen the Danube disappears to apparently pop out 12km away to from the Aach river! So the Danube has to start gathering water again! A small canal allows a little bit of the original water to continue to appease the doubters 🙂
The afternoon continued up & down through gorgeous limestone gorges. Strava says I’ve done
3000 feet of climbing today!
After cycling 54 miles and feeling wrecked I reached Gutenstein and called it a day at the very basic Landgasthof Bahnhof
So that’s the first 80km done
Here are the pictures