Day 3: Franconian Water Wheel Path - 3

We experienced something new today in the breakfast room: In addition to the usual hand disinfection, we had to put on a disposable glove to serve ourselves at the buffet, due to hygiene rules. This was actually a common practice, even in the subsequent hotels in Bavaria. However, it was often noticed that the most important aspect, which protects against a corona infection, was not implemented: Good ventilation of the room. 'Windows closed' was practically always the case in the breakfast rooms and often in the restaurants as well. Sorry folks, but good indoor ventilation is absolutely crucial for diluting the aerosol concentration!

After a delicious breakfast (although the coffee from the fully automatic machine tasted awful), we did some sightseeing in Rothenburg. We climbed the city walls and bought some typical snowballs as a special treat. We enjoyed this shortbread specialty during our first bike break. After the break, we continued with a small incline, which was topped by a short but steep climb in a wooded area - especially because numerous mosquitoes were waiting for us on the steepest part. This time, Jörg came to Janina's rescue. Long live the mosquito spray ('Nobite', like last year). But it got even better: When we rode through the town of Schillingsfürst, we were greeted with an unprecedented steep climb of about 20 percent up to the castle. Wow! Janina preferred to push her bike from the very beginning, Jörg managed to ride half of the way on the saddle at an extremely slow pace and with slalom riding. Even the e-bike could only make slow progress. However, pushing the heavy bike was just as challenging. It's amazing what a difference the luggage makes on the bike!

Today's stage not only had a lot of altitude meters but also different road conditions to offer (asphalt, gravel, debris, mud... only sand was missing). After the steep climb, the path rewarded us with a great long descent - or so we thought! Maybe the steep climb was to blame for our sense of direction almost disappearing. Instead of heading south, we were riding north and got quite far off the water wheel path. What a show! This detour added about 7 kilometers and some altitude meters to the total distance. Being in the plus isn't always so recommendable :-)

We finally arrived in Feuchtwangen around 4 p.m., our café destination for today. We chose the 'Cafe am Kreuzgang', which compensated us for the detour with delicious cake. As we were on our way to our destination Dinkelsbühl, an older gentleman with an e-bike overtook us on an uphill section. We had seen him before at the café at the neighboring table. When he passed Jörg, he said that it's much better to ride up an incline after fortifying oneself with coffee and cake... Exactly, that's what Jörg constantly thinks when he rides up hills with his e-mountain bike :-)

In the evening, we finally arrived in Dinkelsbühl, which according to 'Focus' magazine has the most beautiful old town in Germany. The sightseeing the next day could certainly provide some arguments for that, although Rothenburg could certainly keep up. However, for both towns, a car-free city center is highly recommended. Our hotel was located about 500 meters outside the old town: The Meiser Design Hotel. It offered good food (Jörg had never eaten better sweet potato fries before) and delicious drinks, the rooms were good (the duvets were more suitable for winter and the air conditioning was a bit underdimensioned). We had a very spacious garage for our bikes. So, like in the two previous accommodations, the storage of our bicycles was no problem. Funny enough, the food was brought to the waiters from the kitchen by robots and the dirty dishes were taken back. We hadn't seen that before either :-))

Data for Stage 3:

Distance: 61.6 km

Duration: 4:07h

Average Speed: 15.0 km/h

Max Speed: 48.0 km/h

Elevation Gain: 568 m