September 20: Speyer to Worms
Click on small photos for a full size picture.
Our worst travel day. After leaving Speyer, we miss a river crossing
and end up in a gravel quarry, resulting in a bit of backtracking down a dirt
road. Eventually, we make it to the ferry, 
then head on to Mannheim.
Mannheim is a nightmare. The maps are indistinct, the cloud cover makes
it hard to orient by the sun (we won't discuss the compass issue), and a
combination of the Rhine, canals, and shipping channels make transiting the town
near-impossible. Everyone who offers help gives conflicting directions,
but we eventually make it out of town 
after a couple of hours.
| The Great Bridge Caper... We have to cross the Rhine -
again. The map says we can take this bridge. We ride almost a
mile to reach an entry ramp. Man, this is a busy road, but there are
no "no bike" signs, so off we go. Cars honk. Just as
we reach the main bridge span (after almost a mile on the approach) the
shoulder disappears. Now we realize that we're stuck on this
bridge. We haul the bike over a concrete divider wall over to a
narrow walkway - too narrow to take the bike through, but at least we're
protected from the 80 mph traffic. Jayne walks down to an emergency
phone to call for help, but the police show up before she can make a
call. It's a classic good cop, bad cop. The younger (bad) cop
starts yelling at Jayne (I'm a 100 meters away), causing her to start
crying. The senior (good) cop, calls off the young guy and comes on
up to me. Neither could understand why we didn't just roll the bike
on down the narrow aisle until they see the bike. When I tell him
that the map showed this bridge as bike passable and that there were no
signs, he says "Yes, we're aware of the problem. This happens
regularly." Rather than escorting us and letting us ride over
the bridge in a car lane, since it is the Autobahn, they stop both lanes of traffic and we haul the
bike over to the center of the bridge, lift it over another concrete wall,
and end up hauling it down several flights of stairs on the opposite bank.
At least we didn't get a ticket. |
The rest of the ride is uneventful. We cross another small river on a
second ferry, 
then enter Worms around 4:30. The hotel is adequate, but located next to a
noisy construction zone. The desk clerk assures us that the work will stop
at 6 pm.
We do a bit of a walkabout 
,
then stop into an Italian restaurant for dinner.