8-5-2013 Muhr an See to Pappenheim

Leaving Muhr am See in the morning we ride along the lake for 6k to Gunzenhausen.   From below the dam at Gunzenhausen to Treuchtlingen the trail is in nature reserve which is on both sides of the Altmuhl.  At one time they had turned the river into a canal but that degraded the environment so they took out the canal and put the meander back in.  Tracts of land along the river are unfarmed and allowed to return to nature. 

This is the road sign for the village of Windsfeld.  It was voted the nicest village in Bavaria one year recently.

In Windsfeld the gestehaus has a large stork nest on the chimney.

Why does the stork cross the road?

This is the last of the stork stuff.  Actually in  the field there were 4 storks.  Johanna says they are now starting to get in flocks and head for North Africa for the winter.  They go by way of Gibraltor because it's shorter.

Near Trommetsheim we took an alternative route to the town of Weissenburg to see the roman Baths.   In Weissenburg there is a Roman fort "Remerkastell Biriciana" which was part of the "Limes Germanicus".  On the 8-20-2011 blog there were pics of another fort "Abusina" along the Danube.  Between 10AD and 300AD the Roman empire boundary was guarded by a series of forts numbering at least 6o with 900 guard towers between the Danube at Regansburg and the north Sea.  There was a continuous wooden palisade that stretched from the Danube to Rhine.  Later a rock wall were built.  This was built to keep out the Barbarian hordes like Johanna. 

The pic above shows the floor and the underlying channels where hot or cold water ran to heat or cool the separate rooms.

The cupolo was a cold room.  The ruins is in a building with walkways built over the ruins.  The were fire pits where the water was heated and allowed to circulate thru the channels.

After Weissenburg we came to a well pump.  Here Johanna is pumping water, half of which will flow to the Rhein and to the North Sea and half will flow to the Danube and to the black Sea.  In 793 Charlemagne ordered the construction of the "Fossa Carolina" to connect a tributary of the Regnitz to the Altmuhl, a tributary of the Danube.  This would have allowed boat traffic between the 2 drainages.  But things didn't pan out for the canal and it was used very little.  It wasn't until 1846 that  the "Ludwig"  canal  was built between Bamberg and Kelheim.  That was abandoned in 1950.  In 1992 Main-Donau Kanal was completed

After a hard days ride a beer goes good.  We got into the cute village of Pappenheim and got a room in a historic gestehaus.  It was built in the 1500s and used as a brewery for a long time then turned in a hotel.