Day 7: Speyer to Mainz

It was a beautiful morning as we left our hotel in Speyer. To be honest, it wasn’t a great hotel — very much at the bottom end of the four star range. It was deadly quiet last night but when we got down for breakfast at 6:45 it was absolutely jumping. A hundred people stuffing huge quantities of four-star-kit-breakfast into their face-holes.

I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on but it turned out there was a big convention of pyramid marketing scheme wellness nutters. My misanthrope-deflection-shield worked its magic but unfortunately Dr T — who is a nicer person than me in so many ways — was cornered over coffee by an swivel-eyed middle-aged wellness nutter woman who was well on her way to adding Dr T to her WhatsApp group which could balance the chakras of our bicycles and supply wellness balanced nutritional supplements for only a small down payment of €100 or something. I hate wellness nutters. Eventually, Dr T charmingly prized herself away — I would have stabbed somebody in the thigh with a greasy breakfast fork — and we were off.

Getting out of Speyer was relatively easy and before long we were on the long, straight and beautifully signed EV15.

At this point we are still in “Jesus, there’s so much maize” land.

As we go further north, the very agricultural feel to the Rhine starts to become more industrial.

As we turned a corner, we saw the biggest factory so far. Some research seems to suggest it’s doing something complicated with “grading”.

We thought this was big. But we were wrong.

As we were about to cross the Rhine on an unexpected ferry, we saw another couple doing the Rhine trip but using a different mode of transport. We cheerily waved at each other and they continued their sedate drifting towards Rotterdam.

I expect this is a lot harder in the other direction.

After the ferry and circling the factory, it was back to the endless woods and paths of Germany.

More paths through the woods.

One of the odd things about the EV15 is that you spend a long time in the countryside and then suddenly you hit an enormous German city like Ludwigshafen. We spent some time negotiating the cycle paths around the (extensive) urban motorway system.

Not exactly picturesque.

Ludwigshafen is mostly famous for hosting the BASF factory which is the largest integrated chemical complex in the world — it covers an area of 10 km^2 — and, as they constantly reminded us, “BASF creates chemistry”.  We must have been cycling past it for about 30 minutes. They also have BASF supplied bikes for all the workers.

There are literally tens of thousands of these parked everywhere.

Interestingly — well interestingly if you’re a maths geek — they all have numbers and I originally thought we could apply the statistics behind the “German Tank Problem” to estimate the total number of the bikes. However, although I noted a statistically powerful number of the…numbers (130213, 250718, 115888, 239020 etc), eventually I realised that I hadn’t seen any under about 120,000 and for the techniques of the German Tank Problem to work you need to start at zero (or at least know the start number). So I think we’ll just have to go with the statistical statement “there are an absolute shitload of them”.

Another 20km of Rhine dykes and beautiful paths finally led us to Worms. Worms is another city which claims to be the oldest in Germany but this claim is heavily disputed by other cities who want the prestigious mantle of oldest city in Germany. There was a lot of Martin Luther action around Worms including the event which probably causes more juvenile sniggering in school history classes: The Diet of Worms. Let’s face it, Worms is a pretty funny name for a city but then again, Liverpool probably means something like scrotum or slug in German. You take your juvenile fun where you can get it.

We stopped for our now traditional mid-morning coffee, juice and a sandwich in Worms.

Our own personal Worms diet.

The cycle paths wriggled their way out of Worms — see what I did there? — and soon we were back in the land of long paths and gravel factories.

I promise this is the last picture of a gravel factory.

Because this was a shorter day, we weren’t quite so tired.

A lot of today was like this. Not complaining, it’s great cycling.

Quite suddenly, we were out of the maizeland and into vineland.

The home of Liebfraumilch. Much maligned due to its being the default wine in the UK in the 1960s.

From about 15km out of Mainz, the EV15 started to wiggle (but not in a Wormy way) through the industrial hinterland. With every big city, there is the doughnut of shit to traverse and, although it wasn’t  pretty, the EV15 folks did a good job to get us literally to the centre of the city.

Like every German town bigger than two families and a cow, Mainz has a huge and impressive cathedral at its centre.

Oh look! Another huge impressive house for God.  He’s got a good property portfolio.

Our hotel is very nice. A chain but done well. Not done well enough to have a heated towel rail though. We asked about using the hotel to do some washing but this was definitely more than the receptionists job was worth but she did suggest using a local laundromat. And this innovation has changed everything.

I wandered down to the laundromat, deciphered the instructions, and for €6.50, almost everything we have to wear were getting a 60C wash and a high temperature dry. It was like this.

Yes, I am Nick Kamen.

Actually it wasn’t entirely like that but our cycle kit and my disgusting green t-shirt are now laundry fresh.

Mainz is at the confluence of the Main and the Rhine and was the most important religious city north of the Alps and the only Catholic bishopric outside Rome designated as a Holy See. It’s most famous son is, of course, Johannes Gutenberg the inventor of movable type and the father of the printing press, but much more important than invention that changed the course of human history it has restaurants with high carb food and copious wine.

Today was a great day. The weather was perfect, the route worked well, we weren’t too knackered by the end, we saw the world’s biggest chemical factory (this bit was mostly for me) and we had a Diet in Worms.

Tomorrow we are going through the prettiest part of the Rhine. People come from all over the world to sit on pleasure barges and float past castles and pretty scenery while getting drunk and eating cake. I think cycling it will be better although we might have some cake.  We’re worth it.

Stats:

• Distance: 107km. This is definitely the sweet spot for this trip.
• Average Speed: 20kmh. We do much better than this in the countryside but in cities, you go a lot slower.
• Others: The bodies seem to be holding up well. Maybe shorter days are the trick.

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