Bring on the rain

DAY 28
Off on the trail fairly early today, across flat farmland on dedicated cycle paths for the first few hours passing through small German towns. Quite a few cycle tourers out and about, lots of old people on crappy bikes too. Just as we start to think this flat land may get a bit boring after a while the hills narrow in around the river and we start heading along dirt roads through forest with limestone cliffs along the river. Really nice now, we stop for lunch and order something random which turns out to be a sausage sandwich on one piece of bread with about 5 pounds of raw onion...Tasty! Mei gets something similar without the meat...and without the flavour too.

On we go up some short steep climbs into Beuron, looks nice, monastery and stuff like that. Great scenery along the river with the cliffs surrounding us. Signs for "Donau Radwanderweg" appear all the time to keep us in the right direction, basically follow the river downstream and we'll crash into Budapest so not too tricky just yet.

Stop in Sigmaringen and set up cap, it appears all of the cyclists have the same idea, we try to look smug so everyone else thinks we are proper cyclists, not sure if it's working. Decide to have a kebab for dinner, great choice, 3 Euro for a kebab! Mei even has a vege kebab and thinks it is great! Germans know how to feed.

90 kms, fast and flat.

DAY 29
Day off in Sigmaringen, we walk around a bit and walk past the castle which has the biggest display off weapons in Europe, we decide to skip this cultural delight and instead settle down by the river for lunch. Finally it happens, we get proper rain. In fact the rain hammers down all afternoon and night, to the bar then...

DAY 30
Weather not much better today, soon as we leave we get light rain and we just have to deal with it. Most of the day is on flat roads through farms and along sections of the river. Do Germans eat a lot of corn? They seem to grow a lot, i was expecting fields full of cabbage or asparagus but all we seem to see is corn. It actually looks quite nice for the first hour or so. Nice small towns, lots of little churches, the weather makes it all a bit dreary though. We arrive in the large city of Ulm and head for the tourist office, nearest campsite is 20kms outside town, screw that, we go to the nearest hotel and stay there, then go out and eat like kings. First night in a hotel so far, very nice. Ulm looks great too but not much time spent there, pity.

110 kms, imagine how good we would be on drugs.

DAY 31
Day starts off better, cool but there is some sunshine. Have a quick walk around the cathedral (which is very impressive) then leave along the river. Today is actually quite boring, Mei has a habit of going nuts at about 3 or 4pm, when she's had enough she starts singing weird songs and it's a bit freaky, usually means it's time to stop for the day. Today's route wasn't great so that didn't help, there were some nice bits along the river and through some towns and forest but most of it was through pointless fields of corn, who eats all of this corn? It reminds of mid-west America, i haven't been to mid-west America but imagine it's just like this part of Germany. We even cycled through the outskirts of some semi-industrial towns, nice!

Anyway, today wasn't great, i would expect to see more of the Danube on the "Danube cycle way", we arrive in Donauworth in the afternoon which turns out to be a really nice place. The campsite in town is actually on the grounds of the local canoe club, i think they just rent out their lawn to cyclists to make some extra money. Nice warm showers and a beer vending machine (1 euro for a bottle of beer) make it very nice.

We cook dinner then head into town for some beers...surprise surprise.

89 kms.