04 July - Worms to Bad Dürkheim

First we want to start today with a huge birthday SHOUT OUT for Kathleen. Happy Birthday, Kat! We are thinking of you!!

Our day started well; we woke up and had yet another lovely fruestueck (granola, soft boiled eggs, meat and cheese) and left our bags to be hauled to the next town by the good folks at EuroBike. We had not been able to see the inside of the Worms cathedral when we were there the previous night (closed) so this morning we rode to over there and did a brief tour. It was built between 1000-1025 and was truly amazing inside. The stained glass was wonderful though probably fairly new.

Around 11 am we finally bought a few large bottles of water and headed out of town. We rode south along the Rhein and then inland through the potato, asparagus, and onion fields of the Rheinland-Pfalz. The paths that our cue sheet tells us to go through are sometimes interesting and VERY remote (by German standards), through vineyards and past old stone walls, up and down hills of grapes and large windmills. At one point we misread the cue sheet and headed uphill in a potato field for 2km until it started raining... we got mildly drenched and slogged our way through the sandy mud until we found our way back to the original path. The rain didn't last long, so we headed on our merry way.

The skies remained dark so we thought we better eat quickly. We stopped at a small store and bought some picnic supplies (salami, cheese, & crackers) and stopped to chow down in Gruenstadt in a park that was a memorial to German soldiers in the 1850s. We rode south of here and got caught in another cold rain, but this time we hid under a railway bridge until the rain let up (meanwhile kids were riding through the rain past us, giving us funny looks... we wanted to yell 'hey, we're doing 60k today!!'). We decided to tough it out and head into more vineyards and gravel roads. The air smelled fresh and there was a bit of wind, and at sometimes we seemed entirely lost while tumbling over rocks and stones through vineyard after vinyard. We passed a few stone markers with the letter D on them, they looked old enough to be Roman, but we weren't too sure about that (This area was inhabited by the Romans for hundreds of years).

We went through the most amazing town of Freinsheim, an intact medieval village with a huge stone wall completely surrounding it. Most towns in the region once had city walls and many have sections still intact or on display. But this place still has the WHOLE ring, really incredible. We could barely ride through the narrow streets that run along the inside of the city walls, and sometimes had to slowly scoot through tight passages. We actually almost missed this gem of a town, our cue sheets took us almost to the edge and then out of town. Robby remembered that the guy who delivered our bikes mentioned that the town was great so we backtracked to check it out. EXCELLENT plan.

We got some breaddy goods from a Baeckerei and then headed to our final destination for the day, Bad Dürkheim.

Just 5k out of Freinsheim the skies opened up and it POURED on us. We slogged on, Lynne leading the way and not complaining a bit as the rain drenched through our helmets and shorts. We knew that hot showers were less than 10 k away.

We made it to Dürkheim and to our lovely hotel, which is basically a health spa. Our room included two passes to the baths which was exactly what we needed after being cold and wet and muddy for the last 10k of the ride. We showered and headed down to the spa which had a larger tub and smaller one, both warm but neither as warm as a hot tub in the US sense. It was lovely.

Then we headed out for dinner at a local restaurant. We had traditional German (bratwurst and saurkraut) and Swiss food (Raquelle - melted cheese served with potatoes). Bad Durkheim is in the heart of the wine region and hosts the largest wine festival in Germany (the equivalent of beer festivals in Munich). So, of course we had to try some local wine with our dinner which was really nice.

An oddity in Bad Durkheim is an American-style hokey attraction The Largest Wine Cask in the World. Of course we found this highly amusing and had to check it out. In the true US style, it was just a large building in the shape of a wine cask that sells tons of souvenirs of the same. Hilarious and very out of place.

After that we decided to skip the internet cafe because the next day is our longest day, over 70km. If we were on paved roads in our own bikes that would be nothing but with these heavy bikes going over cobbles and dirt and who knows what else, it is a lot of work. Gotta get some sleep.

xxx
- Robby and Lynne

Kurparkhotel
Schloßplatz 1-4
67098 Bad Dürkheim
Tel 0049-6322-7970

Bad Dürkheim official site
A great webcam in Bad Dürkheim of a castle. Another webcam of just weather.

Description from Bike Tours Direct:
Day 3 - Worms – Bad Dürkheim (approx 49 km, 29 miles
Rhine-plains, vineyards
The day starts on the banks of the Rhine and goes on to the northern part of the German Wine-Street. Through almost endless vineyards you visit lovely wine-grower villages, offering quality wines directly from the grower. Further on the route leads to Freinsheim with its beautiful medieval centre and the old fortifications. Today’s destination is the health-spa town Bad Dürkheim with the biggest wine-barrel of the world. The health-spa offers a variety of well-being facilities at the disposal of our guests.