LA WANTZENAU - Drusenheim - NEUBURG AM RHINE 40 mil

LA WANTZENAU - Drusenheim - NEUBURG AM RHINE 40 miles

We left a very nice hotel. The sun was shining and had many stops for coffee, lunch and lastly tea at a place on the Rhine called Au Bord du Rhine at Lauterbourg which is the easternmost town in mainland France yet surrounded on three sides by German territory. As we watched this very fast flowing river we were amazed at the very long ships going past. You need transport to go from one end to the other! They carried anything from gravel, containers etc.
When we cycled through Offendorf we stopped at a structure on the side of the road. It was a 2000-year-old fossilised log found in a gravel pit in this village of Offendorf. (See above). We had passed these gravel pits and they were still working hard to extract more gravel. Heaps and heaps of pea-shingle to much larger gravel, all neatly sorted.
When cycling through Munchhausen over the River Sauer we noticed these Reed collectors' punts. (See above). These traditional punts were once used for fishing but now mainly for harvesting reeds. The strange thing is that you would expect to see these reeds also being used for the roofs of houses there. But not so. Perhaps the quality isn't good enough. Nothing perhaps like the reeds harvested in Norfolk, which is of a very high quality.
The route gives us a choice tomorrow. Stay on the west side of the Rhine or go via the east through Karlsruhe. It's tricky going through a large city again. We shall sleep on it.


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