
Fridlingen to Reidlingen
Cornucopias and Escargatoires
It’s raining in the morning, and there is no magic reprieve in the shape of a cancellation so we must pack up and ride after one of the best breakfasts on the whole trip. By best breakfast I mean bircher muesli, really good yogurt and fruit and bread with a bit of substance, not the smashed avocado kind we Melbournites are used to.
Fortunately the rain clears just as we are ready to set off and we ride into a magical, misty world that lasts almost the whole 30+ km to Sigmaringen. We are still in a deep valley with almost vertical cliffs, and atop some of the cliffs there are old castles or mansions – it’s a bit hard to tell, but it makes for spectacular riding.
The ride is ‘undulating’ as we traverse along the river valley and then up into, along and down the cliff faces and we ride some pretty short and un-sweet rises that test my resolve given I am of the belief we are supposed to be going down after yesterday’s highs.
Along the path which is still wet from rain we encounter cornucopias of slugs and escargatoires of enormous snails (yep, they are the collective nouns for slugs and snails). It is as if there are slug/snail seeds that have germinated overnight in the rain. There are tens, if not hundreds, of slugs all making their slow progress from one side of the track to the other. Softy me uses all my bike skills dodging them and the giant snails. Some of these slimy beasts have not been so lucky as to strike (or rather, not strike me) and the path is littered with their oozy corpses. Just where on earth do they all come from?
After the morning’s beautiful ride we enjoy lunch in Sigmaringen in the shadow of a bold and impressive castle. After three weeks in France of lunch trauma, it’s great to be somewhere where you can ride into town, sit down at a cafe at almost any time of day and order items from a menu without having to deal with a formule three course lunch. And there’s cake!
As we enjoy lunch we see lots of cyclists ride into town, with most bikes covered in mud and looking much like our own, and most bikes being e-bikes, very much not like our own. We met a Swiss-English couple this morning at the gasthaus and we’ve leapfrogged them all the way along. They are some of the only ‘manual’ bike riders we’ve encountered in recent days. We are dinosaurs, cyclewise, in these parts.
After lunch it is a definite race to beat the weather. Black clouds hang ominously overhead as we ride like practical stink (that means as fast as possible given the circumstances of poor trails, nasty little climbs and the effects of cumulative fatigue) to get to Reidlingen. Because of the weather uncertainty we’ve left our options open by not booking anywhere to stay and we find ourselves on the outskirts of town madly searching for somewhere. There are a few overpriced hotel options and not much else, but we ride into the centre of town on the hopes that a gasthaus that has no practical online presence will have room.
And it does! Gasthaus Hirsch welcomes us with open arms, providing a large room with a decent shower and, importantly, a very welcome post-ride beer.
The town is smallish but quite cute with a typical cobbled-street town centre and has a few restaurants to choose from. Eschewing yet another stodgy Kasespatzle (Swabian cheese spaetzle with onions) for me, we settle on a Greek restaurant, Mykonos, which is a multi-generational restaurant which has operated here since the 1980s. It makes me wonder how a Greek family ended up living Reidlingen in Germany?
After dinner we sit in the cosy bar/dining room of our guesthouse, enjoying dessert and a nightcap alongside a number of German revellers and a few other cyclists. It makes for a really nice communal atmosphere.
And you know what? The bucketing, flash-flooding, dire rain never really happened. Sure, there was a bit of rain that drove everybody inside, but really nothing like what was predicted. You mean I rode like practical stink for nothing?
Stats for today:
- Distance: 67.69km
- Climb: 227m
- Average speed: 16.8km/h
- Average temperature: 19C
- Moving time: 4:02:19
- See our ride on Strava
The beer picture
At the end of a day’s ride, our tradition is to enjoy a beer, and to photograph it for posterity. Today’s beer picture was taken out the front of our gasthouse in Reidlingen.
Along the way today:








