Day 11 - Worms to Karlsruhe

This was to be our last days cycling before a couple of days off. What was better was that we would be spending those days with Bill, Ali and family, and will be totally spoilt.

And what was even better was that Bill and Rory would be biking with be biking with us for a ride what should be about 90k to Karlsruhe.

NOTE - the distance from Bingen to Karlsruhe is 160k according to


http://www.rhinecycleroute.eu/stages

Therefore Worms to Karlsruhe is about 80k, add on a bit for to get to Bill´s house plus wrong turnings etc. makes it about 90k. More of this later

Anyhow. We were only about 5mins late meeting Bill, everyone is very tired, and it is hard to sleep as it was a very hot night and by Wiseman standards 5 mins late is quite early A quick stop in Lidls to drink 3 litres of iced tea and buy loads of bars and off we went. The cycle route was good, smooth tarmac and car free. After yesterdays struggle this was great and soon the "intermediate sprints" and riding in a peleton started again. Rory easily beat me on a sprint climb, then we all worked hard in a peleton, maintaining speeds of 26 - 30kph, but dropped the yellow jersey (Paula). We waited, just in case she got lost again!! and let here have a couple of mins head start, so that we could race to her for another sprint. The plan was for Bill to lead out Rory, Chris to lead out Kate, and Rachel and me to lead out Sarah. However Bill and Chris abandoned their lead out roles and sprinted against each other and only narrowly avoiding a crash.

All this made the morning fly by and we decided to push on to Speyer, which is a lovely city, for lunch. The last 10k their were quite hard, as it was getting very hot again, 39C

We had a lovely long lunch, but maybe 3 pints of beer was not the best option! however as we had ridden 50k in the morning surely there was only 40k to go?

We got a bit lost getting out of Speyer and after 5k saw a sign saying Speyer 2k. We soon found the track which again was good, another Peleton was formed with Bill & Chris ramping up the speed until everyone else was dropped. We stopped in Germershein to buy more water and iced tea, this was 30k since lunch and Bill announced we have about 40k more to go!!

It was good to see Bill get some stick from the kids instead of me. :-)

We crossed the Rhine to the East side and headed to Russheim and it was about here where we passed the 1000k mark for the trip, a great achievement. We eventually saw a sign Karlsruhe 13k and then had a gorgeous, dead straight, smooth cycle path through the woods all the way to the Schloss in the centre of Karlsruhe. The children had renewed energy and continued their racing. We headed through Karlsruhe to Bills house and arrived at 8.45, two and a half hours late after riding 120k !!

But it was a great ride and a fantastic feeling to know what we have done and to have 2 days off.

Today Stats
Distance 120.4k
Time 6.05.16
Average speed 19.7kph
Climb 256m
Total distance 1036k