Day 8 - Mainz to Karlsruhe

I left Adam and Mainz at 8am and made my way toward the B9, the road alongside which my cycle path had run for the past few days. To my chagrin, the B9, which had been a single lane A-ish road through the Rhine valley, opened out into more of a motorway soon after Mainz and there was no cycle path as there had been.

This being so, I had to leave my planned route and enter into a network of small villages which would take me, at length, to Karlsruhe. Unfortunately, since the actual route was so different to that which I had expected, I had no idea which towns I was looking for and so was heavily dependant on local knowledge. This was not forthcoming as several of the village people seemed to foster a parochial suspicion of the odd chap coming through on a bicycle and it took me a long time to get directions in the many villages I went through.

The cycling itself was quite good. My legs were feeling good and I made my way through miles and miles of vineyards, often on downhill/sidehill slopes which gave me extra pace. For every mile of fine cycling though, there was a half mile of frustrating twists and turns through the little villages. This was further frustrated by many Barratt-style developments on the outskirts of several of the settlements which were a maze of roundabouts and sidepaths which quickly disorientated me. This labyrinth continued all the way through to the first major city on the route, Ludwigshafen. In my mind’s eye this was about two thirds of the way to Karlsruhe and I thought that, provided I could find a decent bit of lunch, I would be fine to complete the last leg before dark. This bright prospect was soon darkened as there was nowhere but a kebab shop for lunch in Ludwigshafen (later described to me as the most miserable city in Germany) and it seemed my distance estimate was way out and I had in fact only completed about half of the day’s work.

Obtaining a map from a tourist information office, I took to the road knowing I had to be quick to avoid another Duisburg situation. After twenty more miles of bleak, winding villages (see left) I located a cycle path through a forested area which the map indicated went straight through to Worth, a town on the bank opposite to Karlsruhe. With the sun going down, I raced along the flat, scenic paths in five mile sections, stopping for water and sugar regularly in order to keep up the required pace. This plan worked and I arrived in Worth in good time. I then found my way to Karlsruhe without too many problems, arriving at the centre in darkness but without danger. Looking at my cycle computer for the first time in a while, it seemed I had complete my first ever ton without realising it. I had planned for around 85 miles. Although 15 miles extra is numerically a small figure I certainly felt the difference and I arrived at Carlos’ tired.

Carlos is a native Venezuelan who has lived in Karlsruhe for eight years and he is fiercely proud of the city he now calls his home. He rues the bombing of the city during the war and showed me the regular pattern of old house, old house, old house, new house, old house, old house, old house, new house in the centre of town which reflects the regular dropping of bomb after bomb from the same plane as it flew overhead. As he noted, you could trace the flight path of the bombers in the architecture of the city.

It was sobering to see the continuing effect of the war on the consciousness of the current generation of Germans, an effect which is generally absent from young Londoners.

Distance covered 102 miles