Unlike yesterday, this hotel is fully booked so it was a good move to get down to breakfast early. Also unlike yesterday, we slept well until the alarm went off! Breakfast taken, we loaded up and headed out into a cloudy and cool morning. Again we passed farmland, limestone quarries and their associated cement works and the going was almost pan-flat. The river moves slowly around here, unlike the Rhine of our last tour. This is probably unsurprising as we are at about 500m in height and the Danube has another 2,600km to flow before reaching the Black Sea.
The first pause occurred in Herrlingen where we diverted to visit the tomb of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, of Africa Korps fame. He was a very fair WW2 commander, much respected by both sides; he was anti-Nazi and part of the failed coup against Hitler. As a consequence, he was invited by the Fuhrer to commit suicide rather than face execution for his part because of the effect bad propaganda would have on army morale. He took the cyanide capsule here in this village.
We continued on to the city of Ulm which is home to a cathedral with the tallest spire in the world ... deliberately heightened to beat Cologne Cathedral. Coffee and cake were consumed admiring it across the plaza. Then it was onward, variously on cycle tracks both of tarmac as smooth as a table top with neatly bevelled edges at a consistent and precise 45 deg, or through long stretches of gravel path through forest and fenland. A picnic lunch was taken at a convenient bench along the path, then a further stop was made for a bakery cake and fruit. That was when disaster struck. Anne carefully sliced the peach and I, unwilling to waste the bits around the stone, gnawed at the core. I inadvertently bit onto the stone with my 41 year-old post crown and heard/felt a crack. The crown remains, wobbly but secure (so far), but it would appear the tooth root is fractured. I just hope it holds until the return home (thanks Binnie for the telephone consultation that confirmed my suspicion ... and for the warning of how much it is going to cost to get this fixed!). The weather stayed cool and clouds looked threatening, and spitty rain did start just enough to persuade us to don jackets, but it really didn't come to much. A brief stop for a coffee at Gundelfingen, just short of our destination, reinvigorated us and we arrived in time to shower, wash kit, and explore the old town before a beer and a very carefully chewed meal.
44.5 miles at 10.3 mph avg. 4 hrs 20 mins moving time including walking around Ulm and just 140m ascent.
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