Day 8 - Obrigheim - 40 miles
After the ups and downs of last week, this really felt like a turning point of us hitting a daily rhythm. Up early and packed down fast, we got out of the nudist camp before 8:30am and chewed through the miles. I'd fired off a few emails the night before looking for free hosts on 1nitetent.com and by this morning we had confirmation of a place to stay before we'd even set off, which by this point was a real rarity.
It's a blessing and a curse for us that on Sundays the vast majority of shops are shut in Germany for the whole day so we didn't have many opportunities for faff. Having said that, we thought best not to upset the natural balance too much and factored in a stop at a petrol station with less than 10 miles to go. What should have been a quick in and out turned into nearly an hour of melting in the 37° sun whilst I attempted to chug a litre of fanta to keep morale on top form.
Much later than originally agreed with our host Tauben, we made it to his house where we were once again blown away by the hospitality shown by the German folk. Within 10 minutes of meeting, we'd been given a box of chilled beer, a cool garage to sleep in and free reigns of the house whilst Tauben and his wife went out for dinner.
Day 9 - Erdmannhausen - 56 miles
As nice as the offer to sleep in the garage was for getting out of the heatwave, we both woke up feeling like ass, probably from sleeping on an unventilated dusty floor. I don't want to sound ungrateful as we'd been offered many different spots to sleep and this was our pick, but especially for Jonny who had been coughing his way through the first 600 miles of the trip, it didn't set us up for what would turn out to be a rollercoaster day. We had coffees with our chillest host and chatted about his job designing merch for the biggest rock bands in the world before hitting the road.
The first 15 miles were smooth and fast following the Rhine south towards Stuttgart. This marked our rough point on the route where we'd agreed to turn East towards Munich and the hills in between. We popped into Aldi for snacks and a fruitless stop at M&M bikes looking for chamois cream (lube to stop your butt chaffing on the bike) before pushing on until our standard 11am coffee break. I checked my front bag for my wallet containing every single bank card I'd brought on the trip, not there. Losing things has always been in my DNA, mum made me wear a wallet chained to keep it attached to me at all times as an 8 year old but this was seriously dumb. I spent 20 seconds checking my tile tracker app to confirm it wasn't on the bike whilst swearing way too loud in a sleepy German cafe. Agreed with Jonny that I had to go back and look for it, took the bags off my bike so I could sprint and left Jonny as I blasted back the way we came. Whilst riding I'd managed to rule out the Aldi as I vividly remember having my wallet out in the bike shop. Without a doubt this was my highest sustained mph of the trip yet as i rode on busy city streets repeatedly calling the bike shop that was closing in less than 30 minutes time with no answer. I'm pretty sure this was the most immense stress I've felt, riding at my max whilst also thinking of plan B, C and D and tearing up a few times along the way. I caught a screenshot of my video call to Jonny screaming with relief right in front of the family of tourists renting e-bikes.
After this point nothing else really matters for me, we were behind time thanks to me but I was riding on such a high of relief that I couldn't care less.
Day 10 - Gruibingen - 56 miles
I'll keep this day short to leave room for the unexpected evening. Was a great day with big climbs on quiet roads with unrelenting sun followed by the first rain heavy enough to make us pull out our uniform matching waterproofs.
We'd again opted to stay with a host from 1nitetent.com, again just to reiterate that the expectation on this site is just to get a free patch of grass to pitch your tent.. enter Josef.
I honestly could write a whole post about our stay with Josef. We arrived at the address having just been to the shop to buy dinner and beers. It was a pretty big estate with a large farmhouse, small cottage, a barn and acres of land. We said hello as he guided us round the side of his house to an outside table set for dinner and a lit barbeque, we knew not to mention the food we'd just bought. For the next hour we were given fresh sausage, bread and local Bavarian beers as well as a tour of the sprawling gardens that you can see on Josef's instagram here.
Genuinely one of the nicest and most interesting men we've met, at our first opportunity to speak privately we both went to say how he reminded us of our own grandads. Here's just a few things that really stood out about Josef:
He learnt (very good) english just from watching Monty Don's gardening shows.
He built the garden from a blank slate on his own over the course of 50 years, originally by commuting to the family home once a week to do a little work each time and eventually moving back to the estate where he could pour himself in fully. My few photos don't quite show the scale - this was a show garden that took half an hour to walk around and would be a paid for experience in the UK.
He is intensely Bavarian, something I admittedly didnt know much about before the visit. He was realy proud of this part of his identity and eager to share it with us. Later that evening Josef's neighbor swung by for beers. They'd been neighbors for 60+ years and are 2 of the last people still speaking their local dialect. Josef described how each local area would have had their own unique dialect, sometimes very different just 5km apart.
He had an unbelievable sixth sense, I can't stress this enough. Josef chuckled as the church bells rang whilst it was getting dark, without looking at any watch or phone he said '1 minute early today'. We politely laughed as I slyly checked my phone under the table, he was exactly right at 21:59. I grilled him about it probably a little bit too hard but he said he just knew. In a similar vein he read the sky with just a glance to know what the weather was doing next with predictions to the minute, this kept coming up.
Throughout the whole evening Josef had warned us of a big storm coming and how we must leave the tents and take cover when the winds come as they've had fully grown oaks ripped up from their roots in the past. Jonny and I kept saying we'd be fine and in all honesty didn't take the warnings serious because apple and google weather didn't look too bad. One of the areas he showed us to shelter was the old barn that was once filled with hay and had more recently been converted to an impressive village library.
A few more hours of drinking wine late into the night and we felt the lightest spit of rain. '10 minutes, then we go', first thunder started going off, '5 more minutes'. Right on Josef's schedule and out of nowhere we were smacked with 120kph wind, heavy rain and flashes of lightning every second. Without a doubt the biggest storm I've ever seen. We bailed on the tents and ran with our sleeping bags to the barn to hunker down. We held the barn doors shut to stop them being ripped open whilst Josef periodically stuck his head out for a millisecond to assess what the storm was doing.
Eventually Josef said after one of his routine peeps that we were past it now (bear in mind it was pitch black outside, couldn't even see the clouds), sure enough 2 minutes later it eased. We decompressed on the sofa finishing the wine by the light of our phones as all of the electricity in the village was out by this point, so we wouldn't know what damage was done until the morning.
Day 11 - Weisenbach - 40 miles
We were back to blue skies and sun by the morning, we walked the garden and helped pick up all of the toppled potted plants. At first it seemed like it wasn't too bad but at the back of the garden Josef found one of his mature oak trees horizontal across a path. We had a final meal with our host in the barn whilst listening to Bavarian folk tunes and then got on our way.
The choice to stay with Josef really was just a random accident but made for one of the most memorable evenings, we were both sad to say goodbye and extremely grateful for everything he'd done for us.
Along the ride we were constantly hearing the sound of chainsaws cutting through fallen trees and dodging branches on the cycle paths. It was a relatively flat and short day of riding on quiet country roads so we were able to push it a fair bit.
We made it to our campsite in Landsberg am Lech in decent time and started setting up camp for what would be the very last time together, tomorrow we'd make it to Munich and our hotel for 2 nights until Jonny heads home. Just after acknowledging the finality of it all and getting a little sentimental, the pole in Jonnys tent snapped. Knowing it only had to make it one more night I covered it in tape and we threw it up as normal, looked pretty lob sided but did the job. We cooked dinner on the camp stove then wandered up to the on site pub for a couple beers.
For the last hour we'd been hearing what sounded like a big party on the site with a chorus of women singing along to Pitbull's greatest hits and Eminem's most explicit tracks. From the bar we could now see it was a car parked in the middle of the campsite with all doors open blasting on full volume whilst a handful of women danced and their partners awkwardly watched on. Civil war broke out between the German Pat Butcher like campsite owner and the party with the owner screaming for minutes about how 'no one wants to hear your shit music' and something about the police, the party screamed back and pumped the volume. We were sat directly in the middle of the back and forth trying not to chuckle or show allegiance too openly one way or the other.
Day 12 - 40 miles - Landsberg am Lech
Less than 40 miles of mostly downhill to go between us and Munich, we packed up the bikes for the last time and got moving just before 11am. Even with the later start this was one of our fastest days yet, the first 25 miles were a string of fields that tracked along the motorway to Munich. Considering this was our last ride together it was a fun way to end it.
Suburban Munich is a similar mayhem to any other city, very stop start and not particularly fun. Eventually though we broke through the outer crust and found fahradstraßes or 'bike streets' that allow you to whip through the inner city without any other traffic.
We made it to the hotel and split up whilst I went to shop to get laundry detergent so I could give my clothes the first proper wash in 2 weeks and Jonny went to the Trek store to get a bike box ready for his flight home in 2 days. The rest of the night is pretty blurry as we went out for our last hoorah and had way too many beers.
Day 13 - 0 miles - Munich
First day of not riding the bike in 2 weeks but I wouldn't call it a rest day. We had a list of side missions to complete, made twice as difficult when fending off a hangover in the intense heat. First off I needed to rinse the hotel room for every bit of use I could get, charge all devices, wash all my clothes, clean the tent and clean my bags that were now lined with the remains of melted chocolate bars.
Jonny needed to disassemble his bike and tetris it into the cardboard box he'd been gifted whilst I needed to clean my drivetrain and hunt down chamois cream, rear view handlebar mirrors, a head torch and new toiletries. Most bike shops laughed at my request for chamois cream, apparently the Germans don't have such coddled butt cheeks but for me it quickly gets crippling after a few long days in the saddle. I did eventually find something similar in an outdoors shop but really it's just a better than nothing alternative, thankfully I'm meeting my fiancee Nat in Budapest so can get her to bring a resupply.
By the time we'd finished our respective chores and made it back to the hotel it was already getting late, we grabbed dinner at an Italian restaurant nested in what felt like the rougher part of town and a few farewell beers back at the hotel.
Day 14 - 64 miles - Munich
I got up at 6am with the intention of getting up and moving before the city streets woke up. It's slow going moving through a city on a loaded bike but this is twice as bad when you're competing with busy streets. Like a trooper Jonny woke up with me to see me off, 10 hours before his flight home. Having lived and ridden together for the last 2 weeks without break it took us both off-guard saying goodbye in the hotel lobby. I tend to write more about the mishaps in this blog because they make us laugh the most looking back on them but I can't understate how much fun we'd had crossing the Netherlands and Germany together. I'd struggle to remember why but I know I laughed until tears on many occasions over the past 630 miles. No doubt we'll be planning our next bike trip together soon after I make it back to UK but for now, I've still got 2 and a half months of riding solo ahead of me.
Setting off on my own was pretty tough, excited to start the next chapter but feeling the weight of being on my own now for the next few months. I decided to keep my head down and ride essentially non-stop until I was long clear of Munich and its orbit, by midday I'd already cleared 40 miles to Rosenheim, the last major German town I'd see on my trip before crossing into Austria. I snapped out of auto pilot when I got my first glimpse of the Austrian Alps in the distance, the riding was about to get very tough but I was pretty excited for the change.
I took it as easy as possible climbing up and over into Austria, 2 hours of riding uphill in mid 30s heat was brutal but definitely helped with recalibrating on the importance of not watching the numbers on my GPS computer. The next few weeks in Austria were going to be a war of attrition, not the time to push for speed.
I made it to Walchsee lake with the intention of finding a spot to wild camp, something we'd managed to dodge up until now. I hadn't anticipated how touristy the area would be, I'd found a spot that seemed just about passable but managed to scare myself out of it reading a few threads on reddit about the extortionate fines that the local police are known to hand out to wild campers in the area. In the end I settled for a no frills €8 site just on the edge of town which ended up being the worst camping experience of the trip. Returning to my tent at 10:30pm after blog writing by reception, a family of 10+ had set up their tent less than 2 feet from mine and a full size shisha was bubbling a foot from where my head would be. They sent their ~7 year old english speaking daughter round to tell me they'd be awake and loud until at least 1am. Not wanting to argue through this poor girl, I packed up my tent in the complete darkness and moved 20 meters away in a proper strop. Will pick myself up tomorrow.