Day 9: Two bike paths

After a simple breakfast, we continue along the bike path to Schleiz. It's fairly new, wonderfully made, only for cyclists (and pedestrians), and reminds me of the railway bike paths, so there are moderate inclines. It abruptly ends right in front of the parking lot of a shopping center, just like that, without any warning. Then you have to go up the embankment to the parking lot...

The next landmark is Zeulenroda. It's drizzling. Time to put on the anorak. But it's not really raining. Although the tendency is clearly downhill, that doesn't mean I have to conquer any inclines. But the effort is minimal. We head south on small roads with little traffic, varied landscapes, and good signage. In Naitschau, the signposts disappear, and komoot and my wife show what they're capable of. In Neumühle/Elster, we leave the Euregio Egrensis and embark on the Elsterradweg, which will lead us to Leipzig. For us, it starts with a steep incline. I think of Hank Häberle Jr. again (I had forgotten the addition...). It's a good thing that I/we deviated from the plan, because accommodations are scarce. The villages seem partially abandoned, of course, you can find some beautiful houses everywhere, but most of the inns are closed, some for years. Only their signs have survived...

We decide to continue until Gera. For that, we ride through what is probably the most beautiful part of my bike trip so far: the Elstertal. At the beginning, it's just a normal bike path, which becomes narrower and narrower - river, railway, path - and then, like in the Alps, runs alongside a cliff. It's a good thing we're going downhill and not uphill - those going uphill must be sweating, especially since the surface gets worse and worse.

Then we finally make it, it widens again, and the asphalt returns. Just a few more kilometers to Gera. We play it safe and call the Mercure Hotel. It's a bit cheaper than the booking.com price, which pleases the Swabian in me!

We have a meal at the hotel, then blog (yesterday's posts), and tired, I go to sleep. Gera will have to wait.