Day 2: Sigmaringendorf to Ulm

Another good day although maybe a bit too long. 

We were travelling through the land of storks.

There were a lot of these giant multi-coloured storks along the way.

Another hot night. Although the Beim Rindvert lacked air conditioning or a heated towel rail, it did have a superb breakfast buffet including made to order scrambled eggs and unlimited coffee. Like literally everybody we have met so far in Germany, the hotel owner was charming, friendly and engaging. It was a lovely start to the day.

We rolled away from the hotel before 8am to take advantage of the early morning coolness and soon we were back on the EV6 Donauradweg.

Early morning mist and the traditional easy gravel.

The first 20 or 30 km were very easy. We stopped for further coffee in Reidlingen — a lovely town full of half timbered buildings and a giant stork.

 

Slightly creepy when they rear above you like this…

One sees storks everywhere in the fields and on the top of lamp posts. This area of the Danube valley has adopted the stork as the mascot of the area and there are a lot of these painted storks around. There used to be a thing in Cambridge with painted cows if I remember correctly. Maybe the same sort of thing.

The stork thing is pretty interesting.  Why storks and babies?  Why was it such a Northern European trope especially in Germany and Norway?  Well, in the olden days, lots of people got married at the Summer Solstice just as storks were migrating back to Africa.  The storks came back to Northern Europe approximately 9 months later (surprise eh?) and therefore they were associated with the birth of babies — who were conceived pretty sharpish after a marriage at the Summer Solstice. 

Enough of the medieval European folklore.  Back to the cycling. The route took in a lot of well paved farm tracks and specialised cycling routes. A huge amount of it looked like this:

Well paved farm tracks and an infinite amount of maize

We crossed and re-crossed the Danube innumerable times and crossed and recrossed the railway line that runs up the valley. One top tip for anybody thinking of doing this route is that the time between the railway barrier closing and the train coming is very short indeed in Germany. In the UK, it’s not uncommon to wait a couple of minutes at a barrier until the train comes. Here, it’s 20 or 30 seconds.

The day wore on and was made somewhat trying by increasing heat and a constant 20km/h headwind throughout the day. Although the route was notionally flat, there were some really steep little rises of 15% or 20% to contend with and they really sap your energy.

Despite the miserable headwind, there was time for a smiley selfie.

Given that we were doing 110km today and we’d left at 8am, we had time for a few stops. After screwing up the routing in or around Ehingen, we decided to stop for some juice and an ice cream in their really rather beautiful central square but after Ehingen, it all got less fun. The strong and hot headwind got stronger and hotter.

This sort of thing feels very long with a hot headwind throughout.

For some reason the EV6 route deviated from the Danube to go into Blaubeuren which is a tourist hotspot in this part of Germany. It’s the source of the Blau (Blue) river which joins the Danube a little downstream. It’s supposed to be blue but when we were there it seemed to be pretty green to be honest.

Doesn’t look Blau to me.

We got to 90km (which is Dr T’s sweet spot) and entered into the not-the-sweet-spot zone for Dr T. Despite occasional stops at park benches with strange bear carvings it was tough going.

A nice stop for a picnic…

…but a bit creepy with a badly carved bear in a suit watching you.

The only light relief came in town called Blaustein-Arnegg. We have noticed both on this trip and on the Rhine trip that any town larger than two farm buildings and a café has its own fire station. There are fire stations absolutely everywhere. I’m not sure if this is something to do with the flammability of German properties or maybe just a traditional thing but a town like Sigmaringendorf (population 3,700) has a fire station larger than the Cambridge (population 149,000).

Anyway, in Blaustein-Arnegg, they were having a Fireman Show. You might be thinking of the Backdraft hunks Kurt Russell and William Baldwin but it definitely wasn’t that. A well proportioned amateur actress was shouting from a balcony about how her children were all going to burn alive while somewhat short firemen who definitely didn’t look like Kurt Russell unloaded ladders to “save” her.

This was not Backdraft.

However, as this video shows, a huge crowd of Blausteiners were enthralled.

Fireman-based entertainment is popular.

We left just as the huge fire engine with the cherry picker on top was blazing in to rescue the actress.

We reached the outskirts of Ulm tired, thirsty and worn out. We even had to rest in the shade under a graffitied motorway bridge — which had clearly seen service as a toilet. The last 5km were difficult as unexpected and extensive roadworks threw my routing off. Some hasty repair work using Maps and the Garmin got us within 200m of the hotel but my heat-addled brain sent us off in the wrong direction.

However, we got to the Hotel Goldenes Rad eventually and they had beer, wine, a somewhat process-oriented receptionist and…air conditioning!  It’s actually really nice and is only about 100m from the amazing Ulm Minster.

And here is that amazing cathedral.

Even Dr T is shorter than this cathedral spire.

The cathedral at Ulm was started in 1377 and was finally finished in 1870 nearly 500 years later.  Maybe we shouldn’t complain quite as much about HS2 and the Elizabeth Line…. The spire was planned to be a bit shorter but was increased to 161.5m in order to stick a finger up at those folks from Köln by being 4m taller than their spire.  Until 30th of October 2025, it was the tallest church building in the world.  On that day, the Sagrada Famíla in Barcelona became the tallest church building in the world although the Ulm folks still maintain that because they’ve just got one spire, their’s is the best.

By now, we were absolutely starving and I’d picked a traditional German style restaurant for the evening.  On a Sunday night in Ulm, there isn’t a whole lot of choice and the Barfüßer die Hausbrauerei was absolutely jumping.  We managed to snag a table and our charming waitress talked us through the options.  When they arrived they were gigantic portions of pork products.

No calorie deficit for us tomorrow.

The Schweinshaxe — roasted pork knuckle — was gigantic and Dr T’s Schnizel was about the size of Belgium.  After 30 minutes of industrious application to the food, it still looked like this.

Defeated by southern Germany’s insanely large portion sizes.

I have eaten my entire ration of pork for 2026…

And so, to sum up, a harder day than yesterday.  Headwind and heat didn’t help and going longer than 100k is always harder for Dr T.  We’ve got a lot of sub 100k days in the next week or so which is probably good.  

Once again, no jeopardy or near death experiences although maybe next time we see a Fireman show, I could volunteer to be the person on the balcony screaming to be saved…

The stats

• Distance: 109km 😕.  Definitely out of Dr T’s sweet spot and far into the sour spot.
• Climbing: 495m 😕.  For a “downhill following the river” ride, there’s a lot of really brutal little kickers.
• Average Speed: 18.5km/h 😐.  Gravel, junctions, tiredness and avoiding twinkly German families on their bikes out for a Sunday jaunt.
• Bikes: all fine so far. 😀
• Soft tissues: 😕.  Some ankle twinges, sun burn and upset stomachs didn’t help today.

Previous

Next