Day 10 – Tuesday 17 July 2012

Nieder-Moos – Bad Wildungen-Mandern

Campsite

Campingplatz Ederblick, Campingweg 18, 34537 Bad Wildungen-Mandern, www.campingplatz-ederblick-decher.de

Notes

It rained all night and we packed up in miserable conditions. We struck camp in pouring rain and I set off wet and cold. It eased off after an hour or so but returned at intervals during the day. The route took me through heavily wooded country and past several nature parks.

I came across a cycle track along a disused railway from Herbstein to Lauterbach and then took small roads to the west of the 254 for a while. At Alsfeld I met Liz for lunch in a bakery with one or two tables in the window: a good burger with hash browns, fried egg and salad, followed by cake and coffee. From Alsfeld I headed west on smaller roads twisting through villages straddling streams where the road dipped and climbed in wide curves on the other side, out again onto level cycling. Cars would pause behind me and as I turned my head to acknowledge them they would overtake, none trying to squeeze past at speed.

North of Schwalmstadt the small roads neatly avoid the A49 and eventually I turned west along the river Eder, flowing from the Edersee with its many campsites. I had opted for a closer site that was within range and found a graded but unmettalled track to it running the other side of a railway. I crossed the railway on a level crossing with a wooden foot-bed and bumped along to the campsite, sandwiched between the railway and the river.

By this time the sun was trying to shine through scattered cloud and my washing from two days had half a chance of drying in a fair breeze. The facilities block was on the other side of a watercourse and the showers needed tokens but the washbasins had hot water so I scrubbed myself clean with a flannel. There were few other people on the site apart from one or two Dutch campervans.