TravellingStrom

Mayan Prophecy Countdown

After a great breakfast I headed north, I only had about 420km to get to Thomas’ place and it was clear and sunny, although a tad cool. I had plenty of time so while riding north I decided to grab a cache that was just up ahead. That turned into a mess, because it was just off the highway which meant a big detour to find an exit, then find a connecting road then some farm roads then farm tracks and I was still 200m away with a field of crops between me and the cache! I decided not to ride through the crops in case farmer Schmidt had a shotgun and, after another major detour got back onto the slab! That was a learning curve, it seemed to be a drive by from the slab if you were heading in the other direction 🙂

It was somewhere in that bunch of trees in the above foto, so I gave it a miss and kept on going. I had said I would be there around lunchtime and to start with it was easy going, although there was quite a lot of road construction going on, with some speed restrictions and a few bottlenecks. I was only about 30km away when I had to stop for fuel and made a quick phone call to advise of my eta, this was when I was told not to stop for any lunch as they had planned a BBQ and I was there not long after 🙂 I had actually stopped at the village entrance to take a photo and get my bearings, when they drove past, but it was an easy place to find and although Thomas is an internet friend, we still compared bikes, although mine is a tad faster 😉

So after meeting him and his lovely family, and after a great lunch, he had planned a few things. One was a few geocaches in the area, he and his family chase these too, plus a bit of a hike up a hill to see one of the largest Celtic defense walls around. Now here is the thing, I downloaded a lot of German caches to my GPS, but the closest one was 10km away, but he uses his phone application and there were many more that were closer. I figured it was an error on my part, or how I had set the variables up before I downloaded them. Anyway, he took me to an area where he had already found one and gave me the information about the first cache, which was at the base of the dam wall. I just used the skills I had learned about where would be a good place to hide a cache and very easily found my first German cache 🙂

Then we went to another that was close that he had not found before and that was a nice little hunt but a success for both of us. I had actually found it first, but moved out of the area before saying I had seen it and then laughed as he hunted high and low, he got it though 🙂

Next was the part I am not rally fussed on unless I have mental preparation, hiking uphill to see the Kelt Ringwall, it was just under 2km and I was a tad knackered by the time I got to the top. He, being a fitness dude rides his mountain bike up here!! Anyway, I should have taken some water as it was heavy going for me, but get there I did after only a few rest stops and took in the history of the defense wall at the top and a great view of the dam lake as well.

The wall itself was quite impressive and when you think they had to carry all those big rocks by hand, it would have been an effort. But, because there was a natural spring up there(he did not tell me about the water supply until later on the way down), this made for a great place to defend, food being the only issue over time.

After that we went back to get a drink, before picking up his youngest daughter and chasing up a couple more caches in the close local area. Once again, we used Thomas as the GPS device and he basically pointed in the area we needed to look and both of us had success. Not a bad result, four for the day and none of them using my own device 🙂

After that I had to move on, they had no room for me to stay as the house was full, when I tried for a room at the pub across the road, they wanted 56Euro and said there would be loud music until 3am, so I chose to hop on the bike and start looking in the smaller villages towards the north. It was great to meet you and your family Thomas, see you next time 🙂

So, I headed off to the next little town and found myself a reasonably cheap hotel and then wandered around looking for a feed, and a beer as well of course 🙂 I eventually found a bit of action(Saturday night remember) at this place in town and met a few locals and had some great chat. Yussi was the bartender and was a scream. The local Bitbuger bitter apparently is a beer I remember froma long time ago, because this is the one that takes ages to get your hands around, they pour it with plenty of head and it is like icecream on top when you finally get it. Check this photo out.

The one on the left is how it is normally served, but when you get close to the bottom of the glass, you need to pre-order the beer as it can take up to 5 minutes to settle and be presented 🙂 The dregs in the one on the right was a failed attempt at getting a quick beer. Yussi poured one with the correct amount of head and it was instant like we do back home, but there was no head after about a minute and looked like lolly water with no lacing at all. So that was a learning curve, I learned to pre-order ahead 🙂 After a few more beers I headed back and grabbed a donar kebap from the place next door to the hotel and pigged out, this was great food, but after 5 beers I would say that 🙂

It was still quit early, only about 10pm but I crashed out because I had 550km ride tomorrow to the north. I was heading to Davids place, he is my cousins friend and would try and get some work done on the bike.

Cheers from Germany
TravellingStrom