From the campsite bar. Today I rode the few miles up to Todnauburg, the strangely names mountain of death. Once there I used my cunning GPS to guide my walk to Heidegger’s hut or as close as you can get to it. He certainly had a beautiful view. There is no signpost to the hut so you’d need to know in advance where it waS though there is a large signpost about him and his attachment to the area with some photos of him looking rather creepy in his rural costume and funny hat. After that I took the lovely twisty road up to Freiburg about 18 miles away.
Ride to Todtnau and Freiburg at EveryTrail
Motoring and cities never works that well for me but I found somewhere to park and got a coffee and croissant though I didn’t see that much of the town apart from riding through it and platform 8 of the Hauptbahnhof. Back here in the cooling sun with a beer, I worked out a likely campsite to head for tomorrow only about 150 miles north and slightly west from here. So all was looking good but a chance glance at my weather app showed downpours for nearly all of tomorrow starting around ten or eleven. My spirits are rather dampened by this news so maybe I will make a hotel my lodging tomorrow night. I don’t know how accurate these weather maps are but it looks like if I can get a good start and make good progress going north I could keep ahead of the worst of it. So it’s good to be forewarned about that. But as the Dutch campsite owner has just said to me, riding a motorbike in rain is shit. As equipped as ever I have my vaguely waterproof overall and, more important, some anti fog liquid for my specs. I remember driving all day in Scotland in heavy rain with one of my lenses misted up so riding with my head at 45 degrees for about five hours. Usually my trips end up feeling like they are twenty four hours too long.
Day: August 12, 2014
Monday 11th August
It’s 9.30 am and everything is packed and I’m just waiting for the tent to dry out in the morning sun before heading down south, first to the Touratech shop nearby and then to find the campsite near Heidegger’s hut. Two nights there then I return.
Here I am. Today’s ride was easy. Not so many miles and nearly all on beautiful roads. First stop was the Touratech shop and HQ in the town beginning with N… Niederreschacht. No that’s not right. What can I say. The place had some presence. It had its owns cafe full of Touratech staff having lunch. What’s a hobby for me is the daily grind for them. I could run my fingers over all their lovely aluminium panniers. Interestingly, after a morning with the occasional embarrassing moment of poor control at slow speed I spent some time looking at their BMW 650gs loaded with their kit. It’s about half the bulk of Bertha and looks highly manageable. Even the F800 seems long and high in comparison. Hmm.
Then it was over some high hills and down and up again, through Todnau up to this high campsite where the wind blows occasional strong gusts but I feel really sorted. I have a nice spot with a high view and no one near me, the guy who runs the site is nice and gave me a discount if I didn’t want the freebies of free local buts travel which avoids him paying tax on me. Once I had unloaded Bertha of her bulky luggage I rode down to the nearest supermarket down some exciting hairpins and lovely roads and picked up all the fresh food I had been missing for the last few days including local white wine which will be an interesting experience and some beers, all of which is sitting in one of my metal panniers with a big bag of ice keeping it all cool. Added to that I managed to find a cash machine (after three times trying to get cash out of a night deposit box when I finally looked up to see the proper machine). Todnau is the perfect sized town for trips like this. You can park easily and in one place and get all you need. It is beautiful up here. The sun is shining and the sky is blue and of course the air is so fresh. We are 3400 feet up. No wonder the wind is chilly. Tomorrow I will ride over the Todnauburg – it’s not really walkable – and strike out for Heidegger’s hut. I will take the GPS but still I’m not completely confident I will find it.
Miles 113 average 34.4 mph Max sped 71.4 mph, moving time 3 hrs 17 minutes
It’s a quarter to eight in the evening and it’s twelve degrees. This is one of those camping moments. The recipe is just right well almost, nothing is ever fully satisfying of course. Cooking (inside this huge tent for the first time) fresh produce with chilled local white wine and even some crisps, with a view of the hills of pine trees and sky with whisks of white cloud, my position here is private which is rare when camping (in the previous site, I took down my tent right under the noses of a couple having breakfast this morning barely 4 feet away) and as people staying here walk by on the road just below me I begin to realise this is far from those sites populated by retired Dutch people who seem to come on holidays to watch TV in their caravans in rows of similar white boxes. These holidays are funny! I discover it every year, there are sublime moments but you have to really earn it and work through so much dissatisfaction and anxiety to reach them. Brrr it is getting cold as I thought it would.
Saturday 10th August
It’s my wedding anniversary. I’ve been married for 30 years!
Last night it rained waking me up but of course the tent was fine. Today is cool so far but with a blue sky. I noticed people walking about with little paper bags and walked down to the main road to investigate. I saw a queue of people in what looked from the outside like a post office but on closer inspection it was a bakery so now I have some pastries for lunch in absence of any other open shop. There is another solitary man here travelling by motorbike from Germany to the French alps he says. I complemented him on his light packing. He has a sensible small tent but on closer inspection I see he carries a large rucksack as he rides and I have to say is rather overweight, so probably we equal out (only Bertha is larger and more powerful than his Japanese dirt bike).
This campsite is aimed at and is full of young families and it reminds me of the few times we camped when the boys were small. In the toilets a father was guiding his toddler to not wee on the floor while the little boy sang a song throughout. How strange that life is all a game to the small. Adults aren’t often to be found singing while doing life’s shores, mostly it’s builders next door but the rest of us learn to be serious and focused.
I finished Where Angels fear to Tread with breakfast. It is nicely written but rather dated of course.
This morning I plan to take a short walk up the hill before it gets too hot…. It was very cool up there with a convenient little hut with its pitched roof just when I needed it. This afternoon I’ve spent reading Reissman’s book on narrative analysis, with a degree of scepticism. Published in 1990, Derrida, Freud, Foucault, Levi Strauss and a host of post structuralist thinkers don’t appear in the index. For me this is a rather parochial investigation, rooted in US feminist sociology without even the continental feminists like Kristeva influencing the ideas.
Saturday 9th August
I write from the sunny black Forrest next to my tent pitched by a stream. Today had its ups and downs literarily in this case. After sleeping well I woke to breakfast at 7.30 before the dining room opened but they were kind enough to serve me. It was raining outside so I delayed my exit for an hour until it stopped. €62 for a bed breakfast and garage seemed good to me and the place had the winning combination of being unpretentious and having English spoken. I packed up Bertha in her garage and then heaved her out onto the sloping alley and struggled to keep her upright. With my heart still pounding from exertion and the anxiety of nearly dropping her, I drove down to the hotel to return the garage key and promptly dropped her unfortunate bulk on the road while getting off without putting the sidestand down. I must say she took the fall very well. There was nothing for it but to unload everything and try to get her upright. I’ve done it before so I know it’s possible. A petite woman walking a dog asked whether she could help but I politely declined and just when I was starting to fish out my camera to record the event two beefy guys turned up and got her upright in no time without even taking the cigarettes out of their mouths. They seemed really pleased to help. It was strangely an enjoyable drama to live through the event you’ve been dreading. I remember reading, though from a different context and continent, Ted Simon saying that he didn’t fear disasters as he saw them as opportunities for people to express their humanity and provide help.
Once on the road I was heading about 190 miles to a campsite mentioned in the Cool Camping Guide, one of only a few in Germany. This one is in the black Forrest and has a car free tent area so the antidote to my caravan aversion, so some motorway miles with a parking stop populated by two coaches of football supporters and some lovely twisty roads later I found the place. It’s sweet and all the nasty caravans are tucked away completely invisible and everyone here is a cool camper under canvass (nylon) reading paperbacks and I am saying hello to people. It takes a while to wind down after arriving and organising everything in the heat to notice how beautiful the site is and how lovely it’s situation.
Miles 194 average 57.8mph max speed 92.5mph moving time 3 hrs 21 minutes
Working out the rest of the trip:
Sunday night here
Monday southern black Forrest
Teusday southern black Forrest
Wedn northern black Forrest
Thursday Northern Germany or Loreleyblick
Touratech is only 37 miles away south and Heidegger’s hut is 60 miles southwest and there seems to be a campsite quite close by where I can hide and prepare for my assault on the hut. Be warned, the guides say, it is still owned by the Heidegger family and they do not like their privacy intruded upon. The Heidegger family, Some sources say, are heavily armed and expertly trained in the techniques of close combat. I’ve worked out a good site to stay at close to Bitburg where Bitburger comes from for my last night before the ordeal of the Dutch motorway system.