July 10/11

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Monday July 10

Steep hills with sweat pouring off me. Eventually became less hilly and I made good progress to Altdorf and then to Aalen where I stayed at the Jugendherberge.

Tuesday July 11.
I had difficulty finding my way out of the city and in particular finding the bike path, the Radweg. A local cyclist overtook me and advised against the Radweg as it winds all over the place. I took the Bundesstrasse, the equivalent of the British A-roads but the traffic was very heavy. At one point I had to clamber over a crash barrier to get off what was, in effect, a motorway in all but name. German lorry drivers do the speed limit even though common sense would indicate a lower speed. In one small village with narrow streets I was sat on the grass by a roundabout. A massive lorry carrying tree trunks which overhung the cab by a few metres careered around the roundabout with the trunks sweeping over my head and nearby people. “It says 30 kms/hour and that is what I shall do! Verstehen!” Plonkers to a man.
Arrived in Donauworth, a city engraved on my memory from the history lessons given by “Spot” Avery at Barnsley Grammar School. The Thirty Years War with all its complications is like childhood nursery rhymes, never to be forgotten. Happy days. Spot (father of at least 5 children) used to teach the sex lessons. One lad asked him if a sperm could get through a condom. “Listen lad he boomed, it can get through a bloody Wellington boot!”
It is now the start of the Donauradweg, perhaps the most famous of the cycle paths in Germany and indeed in Europe. The Jugendherberge was really nice with a very helpful lady as custodian. She put me on the top floor, well away from the hordes of school kids on lower floors. At breakfast I told the school teachers that I was a retired teacher and they laughed and said only 30 years to go for them.

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