Start: Weissenburg
Finish: Roth
Distance: 17
Total: 1352
Day 89 was a very nice day of walking until the frustrating end of the day. The weather was very nice, the road wasn’t half bad, and 17 miles is an average day. But unfortunately when I got to my destination of Roth, things just didn’t come together the way I would have liked.
After a good night’s rest at the Gasthof Schwarzer in Weissenburg, I hit the trail this morning at 8:00. The route today was nice and flat and I made good time until I got to the little village of Rottenbach. I got there about lunchtime and stopped at a little meat market that also made sandwiches. Shortly after leaving the lunch break, the road leaving town was closed for construction. There were detour signs for vehicle traffic, but sometimes I can just stay a safe distance from the road work crews and walk through their construction zone. Not this time. The road was completely torn up and machinery was everywhere, so I decided to follow the detour route with the vehicle traffic, not knowing how far out of the way this would take me. Lucky for me, it only added about a half-mile to my route and I was back on my planned route fairly quickly.
I had been walking a bike route that paralleled the main road all morning, but immediately after walking around the first relatively short construction zone mentioned above, there began a much more extensive road closure that even took away the bike route. For the next five miles I walked in the ditch along the temporary road that had been built for the vehicular traffic. The ditch had been mowed, but the grass and weeds were still about six inches tall so it wasn’t the best walking conditions. After the road construction ended, the bike trail reappeared and I was able to follow it the rest of the way to Roth.
Unlike most other days, I decided not to make a lodging reservation in advance in Roth. It’s a reasonably large town with several hotel options so I waited until I got to town to find a place to stay. However, as I walked into town, there was a big banner across the road that read “Welcome Triathlon Athletes.” After stopping at a half-dozen prospective hotels, and walking in circles for an hour, I finally decided the triathlon participants had beaten me to the punch and it just wasn’t in the cards for me to stay in Roth tonight. So I went to Plan B; take the train 15 miles forward to tomorrow’s destination, Nuremberg, stay in the hotel I already have booked for two nights there starting tomorrow night, and take the train back to Roth to pick back up the walk tomorrow. So I called the hotel in Nuremberg to ensure I could stay there tonight, backtracked a mile to the Roth train station, and rode the train to Nuremberg. The hotel is only about a 15 minute walk from the Nuremberg central train station so after originally arriving in Roth at 2:00, I finally got to my hotel in Nuremberg at 4:00.
Tomorrow I’ve got 16 miles to walk from Roth back to my hotel in Nuremberg. I’ll get to slack pack so assuming there are no unexpected surprises along the way, it should be a fairly easy day. Today was Independence Day at home. All of my family are at the Frio River west of San Antonio having a good time. I hope all of you also had an enjoyable July 4th holiday. Thanks for reading. JB.
