The Roast Chicken Van

From Hirschau to Eslarn was 62 kms nearly all by excellent quiet roads and including the highest hills so far. Virtually none on the cycle path. With a laden touring bike the apparent grade is the actual grade magnified about 25% so a bit weary tonight as my fitness is still adjusting. Some of the ups pushing my limits, but the downs some wonderful effortless windchilling at 55 kph. The effort put into climbing the hills ( as in potential energy) is not all useful on the downs because of the non-linearity of aerodynamic drag and our own personnally defined boundary conditions on max and min speed. 62 kms was a reasonable day.

Near the church another Camino de Santiago de Compostella stone and route maps through the region.

Many tiltles came to mind for this story. The first was "remembering Neil". Back a few days whilst meandering through Furth before Nurnberg, on an average road and not where I wanted to be, I could hear a truck approaching from behind and as it moved on another large noise behind so I just decided without looking to flick the bike right, onto the narrow footpath, and within seconds a large tractor and trailer went by. This morning, just after starting the ride, and as the multi-purpose path was excellent, I was on it, and just then another large tractor with trailer. It was back in 2008 somewhere just south of here on the Donau Radweg, that Neil, a North American and the elder statesman of our Orient Express ride, fell under a tractor and thanks to German medicine, he has survived and made a good recovery I hear.

Another possibility was The QantasLink Hostess who on the Canberra-Sydney flight would have a habit of scoring each landing out of 10. You see I was wondering about a score for this Pan Europa bike route. But as it is still a work in progress that would be premature to score as I would be unkind. And it also brought to mind my youthful understanding of what Qantas, and then Lufthansa, are acronyms for, so I thought better of it.

But it was in Wernberg-Koblitz about 30 kms into the day that a bit of clarity occurred. Whilst riding through the centre of town the strong smells of roast chicken wafted past and as I slowed to notice the roast chicken van I also noticed Backerei Melinger which was the sort of place I was really looking for. The owner spoke a very good version of english-canadian English. Apparently this town was the place for much recent fanfare where the politicians announced the official opening of the Pan Europa Paris Prague Radweg. The route is on my map in red like all the other major established bicycle routes that cover the country.

But the opening WAS like, when in 1948, the Prime Minister Ben Chifley in 1949 at Adaminaby announced the official opening of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme: viz construction had just begun and then we knew (well not me at the time as my understanding of english was very slight) what opening meant. That would turn out to be a wonderful project with much great technical challenges and as we subsequently saw, much technical development. (Unlike our recent small minded smarty-pants scheming prime minister John Howard who liked to call the Adelaide-Darwin railway project a modern "Snowy" project where there was no "development", no great challenges, a financial misadventure of a large kind, and no residual value:- there is no comparison).

It was NOT like when Premier Lang opened the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932 and you could then drive your car and ride your bikes over it.

The Pan Europa currently is a connecting sequence of paths, roads and goat tracks, and is under construction. The Backerei owner pointed me in the direction of the Rathaus (as in rat for information or advice) also known as the Mayor's house or simply town hall where she promised me there would be all the maps and information I needed to get me to Prague. Alas it was not to be but was useful and gave maps and the route I followed today. They also said Eslarn, from where I have just had dinner in the Gasthaus, was a popular tourist town, and their Rathaus would be very useful, and had lots of accommodation. This place it turns out is the only accommodation I could find but it is terrific.

The Rathaus is closed in the afternoon when all cyclists arrive.

So for dinner. There was myself and 3 couples of the traditional type - 2 together and the 3rd separate, all drinking beer from the traditional 0.5 L size mugs - no wine. The separate couple hardly said a word and spent the whole evening reading their own magazines. Would they be further round the marriage-go-round than the others? At least it was peaceful in the dining room and the waiter as good as you need.

For some reason I won't delay you for, the waiter gave me without asking a heated schnapps/liquor drink - exquisite! And the paprika schnitzel the best and with no fried bread crumbs.

Czech Republic now just a few kms away - perhaps 5 and Plzen 107 by some route.