Day 10: A hot Saturday!

Saturday was nice but rather hot for southern Germany. We tried to sleep in but it was really too hot.  We had breakfast in the apartment (we bought some bread and butter and juice andvitamins before the holiday on Thursday).

Then we started our bike ride to Kocherstetten, which is a village some miles beyond Braunsbach, which we visited on Thursday.  The the first 10 miles are becoming familiar but then we biked another six or seven. Here are some of the familiar parts.

During the ride we saw much gorgeous scenery, at least three castles of some sort or another (two from a great distance), some swans, and a bunch of herons doing strange things. Other than getting a bit too hot, it was a lovely day. Many other folks were out riding bikes, as well.

We passed three castles, one up close and two on hills across the river, a couple of sport parks, quite a few farmers busy cutting or bailing hay, many other cyclists, and lots of butterflies. We rode through more farms, fields, meadows, and forests and through or near several villages. We found this little chapel of St. Bonafitus and St. Sebastian. 

It is tiny but convenient for cyclists on the Radweg.

And then some hill climbing deep in a forest. Do not get careless and run off the path because one side is always a steep drop.

Then into a little village with a castle. Schloss Döttingen has a restaurant so it might have to be a target of one of our rides soon. It was a small village right in the middle of a farming area between the hills. 

After the next hill, we had an expansive view of the hills across the river. In between these two larger hills is a village and in the small hill above the village is another castle.

Here's a zoom so you can see the castle or big house or whatever it is a bit. We think this one is somewhere above Otto, possible in the next valley (between the Weilersbach and the Hirschbach) on K2551) but we have no idea if that's accurate or what the name of it might be, if it even has a name, but we can see something on googlemaps that looks about right (on the satellite view).

Then, the past went down by the river again and we saw these cuties.

They seemed pretty happy playing and fishing or whatever.

In the next distant valley we found this castle like thing. Here's the zoom.

And here's the panoramic photo.  It might be Schloss Stetten above Kocherstetten. Who knows?

According to googlemaps, Kocherstetten has two restaurants, one of which has a website that said it would be open...

So, it was much hotter than expected and the bike path north of Braunsbach became distinctly more hilly. It felt much hotter than the 87F we reached and Amelia got a bit over heated. Finally, we came to Kocherstetten and eventually found the Gaststube but it was closed for a wedding. So we went looking for the second restaurant but it doesn't actually exist any more, apparently. So, we biked back to Braunsbach via the road rather than the path to avoid some of the extra hilliness of the path. At Braunsbach we stopped again (as on Thursday) at the Löwen Gasthof and had lunch and much rehydration.


There we found a cycling club having lunch.

We weren't that hungry so we split a meal and drank a whole bunch of mineral water and small soft drinks. 

We also refilled our bottles in the WC for the ride back, and admired the village May pole, which has been up for two years, or so we are told by friends who say the rings indicate that...

Amelia was still a bit over heated so we pedaled back pretty slowly and stopped to drink water and rest in the shade. We didn't stop for many photos. However, here is another view of the autobahn we pass under. For scale you can see a blue car which hasn't got to the bridge yet but already looks tiny.

The other odd photo stop isn't a very good photo but this field had been of interest on the way out. In the next field to the left, as we climbed the little hill on the first part of the journey, we saw a heron stalking something and then going after it in the mown field, possible even in a hole. It was bizarre and aggressive. We are told this is normal heron behavior but we've never seen it before from the herons at the beach!

So on the return trip, we get to the same area and here are at least five herons standing around in a big circle. The photo isn't very good because it's zoomed all the way on the iPhone, but you get the weird idea here.  It was like a meeting or some sort of dance... where they dancing? Plotting the demise of the farmer? Making a planned group hunt for frogs or voles? Who knows?

Our last stop was a rest stop on a shady bench near the ruin of an old wine press. We rested and drank water before finishing the ride back to Schwäbisch Hall. The whole ride route can be seen here: http://www.strava.com/activities/319593203

We ended up with about 33 miles in total (about 53 kilometers) which was Amelia's longest ride since June 8, 2012. Yes, you read that right.  Her longest in about three years.

After long cold showers, we went out for pizza at our local Italian restaurant and drank even more water (the Italian mineral water is very good). 

Then we had ice cream at the Gelateria two doors down from our apartment. It was all good.

The forecast had been for late afternoon thunderstorms, but they didn't show up until well after midnight and didn't last very long. They only cooled us down a degree or two. It was another hot night of sleeping and missing our air conditioning. We have all the windows open but there just hasn't been much breeze the past few days. This week the weather is supposed to be a bit cooler.  We live in hope!  We might have to go buy a fan or something...