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The river has gone down again (See here for comparison). Daffodils are growing everywhere, trees are beginning to turn green, and we even see the sun occasionally; not that often, as the picture above shows, but at least long enough that the roads dry out sometimes.

This means I’d better get cycling to work more often and try and build up my mileage a bit…

The landscape to the north of the valley I live in is called the Gäu. In the local dialect this is an open flat landscape; it would once have been forest, but it is now given over to open fields. It’s a high plateau with views to the Black Forest and Swabian Jura and Schloss Hohenzollern. Unfortunately the important word there is “high”: only way to the Gäu from my village is about 150m/500′ up a rather steep hill.

One way around this, for lazy people like me, is to catch a train from Stuttgart and to ride home from there. It’s about 8,5km or 5.2 miles from one of the stations on the appropriately named Gaübahn, and most of that is flat or downhill.

In the distance, this road drops suddenly into a valley and comes out above my village. I’ll take pictures of that section as soon as I can work out how to do it safely…

This is Wachendorf Castle, the first of the local castles in this year’s occasional series. The oldest part of the castle apparently dates from the 14th century, and it’s been in the hands of the same family for its entire history: today it’s the centre of a farm and forestry company.

On this occasion, I even managed to get to the front gate. As castles, by definition, are usually built at the top of a hill, I may not be able to keep this up every time, but it’s a good start…

On the way home recently, I glanced at the rear light on the Brompton to check all was well, and found that it wasn’t: the rear light had apparently forgotten what it was supposed to do. The next day at work I put the bike into a stand and swapped the rear light for one we had in stock. Fortunately it worked, saving much swearing and checking of the wiring.

As shown above, this is now working, which is quite a relief, apart from the obvious desirability of being visible to drivers in the dark, the police in Tübingen don’t like ninja cyclists.

The picture above is taken in the pedestrian/bike tunnel linking the north and south of the city, and which will feature in this blog in the future.

It has been raining a bit. Quite a lot, in fact. And then it rained quite a lot more. I’m told this is the case in a lot of places, but in this region, a great deal of this rain subsequently came through our village via the river Neckar, which I’ve written about before.

According to an information on a panel nearby, one possible origin for the name “Neckar” is a Celtic word, meaning “The Wild One”. I like that, so I’m going with the theory, even if Wikipedia disagrees.

We occasionally have to make a few admin related deliveries for work. Tübingen is a very old city, so for any deliveries in the centre a bike is by far the quickest option.

This is the Ammergasse, near the centre of Tübingen, which I’m pretty sure is the most direct legal route by bike. The Ammer is the river running through this side of the city, although confusingly the water running under these bridges isn’t the river itself, but a mill race running parallel to it.

I’m still getting used to the rather odd geography of central Tübingen, which was apparently built piecemeal some time around the Middle Ages: roads make odd turns for long forgotten reasons, stop randomly at the top of a hill or just become a set of steps.

On the other hand, I’m occasionally getting paid to ride my bike and explore a world-famous old city; it could be worse.

Out exploring in summer. It turns out that we really do have covered wooden bridges in this region. This is sensible: the roof protects the deck and structure from snow and rain, and as seen here they create a strong structure, so I suspect it means you can make a longer span.

This one crosses the river Neckar in Oberndorf, one of several surprisingly industrial small towns along the river.

Bringing the weekly shopping home along the Neckar cycleway from Rottenburg am Neckar, the nearest “big” town.

It’s tough being car free, but somehow I survive…

Milestone in Oberndorf am Neckar showing a distance of 50km or 30 miles from the source of the river in Schweningen. If you’ve been taking notes, you’ll recognise Schwenningen as the goal for my 2026 cycling, as the turning point for a century; 100miles or 160km of riding in a day.

Although I have cycled the whole route in the past, Oberndorf was the turning point last year; a round trip from my village to here and back is about 80km/50 miles, so this about half way.

If you’re thinking I’ve got my maths mixed up again, I haven’t: the 50km on the post refers to the route of the river, but the cycleway cuts out a lot of the bends, so it is about 10km less. Of course that means that there are a lot more hills, but you can’t have everything…

Well, it looks like winter has arrived. Last year was fairly mild, so this is the first time I’m dealing with snow here. Apart from anything else, the cycleway to Rottenburg is not cleared, so I can’t just ride into the town. This means I have to make very sure I don’t forget my wallet…

Fortunately within Tübingen cycleways are kept clear so I can still use the Brompton most of the time, although there was one Saturday when the temperature had dropped unexpectedly, leaving patches of ice. I arrived at work upright and as an added bonus, with plenty of adrenaline to make sure I was awake.

I happened to ride through the centre of Tübingen last week: the area in front of the railway station is a park with a large lake in the centre. This had frozen overnight, and some of the citizenry had turned it into an impromptu ice rink.

Days are at least getting longer, thank goodness…