Walking like Peter Laurie from the hunchback of Notre Dame we reached the Main river trail only 400 metes from our b&b and soon found out why this trail gets rave reviews in Germany
At 450 kms long it travels the length of the Main river. Our initial experience on the section to Dettlebach was on a section better surfaced than most freeways. It felt like cheating as without effort we cycled at a goodish 22-25 km/hr with our on board suitcases.
The great surface didn't last but even the secondary trails and off road sections were pretty good quality as we passed heaps of people of all sorts of fitness levels out enjoying the clear and thankfully cooler conditions.
Very soon towns passed by at a blur. Stopping at one
H subtly claimed to have found the source of his retarded rear wheel noticing he'd been towing a 420kg anchor caught on his rear pannier - my comments weren't sympathetic mentioning that the anchor wasnt the only thing retarded !
As good as the signage was we still managed to get lost taking the wrong trail for 3kms near Volkach before realizing we were heading in the wrong direction
Not long after we spied a Liddls supermarket for lunch and did our customary well refined trick of buying enough products to constitute a meal and dine outside like a pair of homeless refugees.
It was about this point that H noticed something slightly amiss with his bike. My efforts to move it for him resulted in me pulling the entire seat out of the tube sleeve - making it a) theft proof b) easy for H to audition for his upcoming role as a circus clown.
With some cursing I'm sure direct at the bike and not at me, we got back on our bikes again with the high speed flat trails helping to pass the kms away.
An afternoon stop for a coke was at a cafe outside of what was advertised as being Germany's biggest private military museum - today conspicuous by the absence of anyone visiting.
At this point our signs gave us two equidistant option so we decided to take the last section along the Main river requiring us to take a short quaint ferry ride from one side of the river to the other.
The ever astute H couldn't believe his luck when he thought he read the distance to Schweinfurt our destination at 17kms at one side of the river as being marginally narrowed to 3.8kms on the other side ! It wasn't until I pointed the sign out to H saying that the town 3.8 kms away was in fact Schwanfeld not Schwerinfurt - same thing said H !
Our final 17kms included a customary late afternoon coke at a restaurant of sorts with German towns now beginning to get into full summer swing by celebrating various wine festivals
We finally reached Schweinfurt a town strangely named after pigs, we strangely felt at home ! We eventually found our hotel with self causing a little bit of a stir when we piled into the elevator to go to our room. With us not moving i thought maybe we were over loaded instructing Kev to hop out, when that didn't appear to work i kept pushing the close door buttons until after a minute or two a fairly patient German told me that in fact i'd been constantly pushing the open doors button !
We both cried with amazement as we opened our hotel room door to find air conditioning for the first time in two trips to Germany !!!
Luxuriating in the cool conditions and seeing how low we could turn it down we eventually made an appearance outdoors to go searching for food to cap off a good days cycle
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