Because 40 miles yesterday wasn’t enough, we are out on bikes again today for a quick 25-mile trek from Frankfurt to Höchst. Okay, that’s not exactly the truth. It’s more like Klaus, and I had so much fun, and the girls had so much ice cream we felt we needed to take them out for some exercise to work some of those calories off. Oh wait, that’s not the truth of it either; we really wanted to share the e-bike experience with Caroline and Stephanie and let them see the city of Frankfurt in a way that is different from any other exploration any of us have done prior.
We picked up the extra e-bikes near Lokalbahnhof in the south of Frankfurt and not far from the Main River. The place is called Frankfurt Bike Tours should anyone else be interested or I need to remember in the future.
I already know I have a fat head, but when taking selfies where I’m on the far edge of the camera, I feel like my head grows twice as large. No lens correction can repair this illusion unless the truth is that my head really is this inflated watermelon of a thing. From left to right, Stephanie, Caroline, Klaus, and Mr. Melonhead.
You’ll never see a fraction of the city you live in if you don’t get out of the subway or out of your car. Seeing things by foot, scooter, or bicycle opens up a few of the world you might not have been aware of. Crossing a small side canal of the Main River on a footbridge, we spotted this overgrown old houseboat.
Our ride is taking us west of Frankfurt, though our destination is essentially a part of the city. For the better part of our trail, we are never very far from the Main River on yet another beautiful late summer day.
Good thing I’m wearing a helmet as I turn my attention away from riding and focus on taking photos cruising along at about 20 kilometers an hour or 13 mph.
Frankfurt is nothing if not a city of a lot of graffiti street art…
…and good advice.
Like the Valkyries, we ride and ride.
You are now looking at Höchst, which is effectively our destination, except we do have a little further away from Frankfurt to travel, and before we continue with that we’ll head into town for lunch, but first…
…we have to cross the Main River on a tiny ferry that only takes pedestrians and bicyclists across the way. Back in June of 2018, we made a similar crossing, except on that visit, we came into town via the train and crossed from the other side.
With nearly 12 miles of the ride finished and after dozens of stops, it’s nearly four hours after we left home in Heddernheim and more than that since breakfast: we are ready for this lazy stop in the old town square.
We are taking a detour from our route as a sign directs us to the Schwanheimer Dünen (dunes), but before we arrive at the beginning of the trail, I spot a bunch of fruit on the ground from a nearly empty tree. While no one else was interested, I had to turn around to investigate. Caroline joined me and was able to identify the ripe fruit as Mirabellen, which is a sweet and slightly tart type of plum. The few fruits in the tree were far too high to pick, so I had to find the best specimens I could on the ground that hadn’t been stepped on or ridden on and dust them off. We bit into them, and I swear they were the best I’d ever had. The hunt was on to identify more relatively undamaged Mirabellen and eat my fill before we continued into the dunes.
A boardwalk led us in and over the dunes area that was formed during the last ice age about 10,000 years ago.
A portable sheep enclosure fence was set up with maybe 70 animals happily grazing on the variety of grasses that commanded their full attention.
Part of our ride today follows the steps of the “Spaetlesereiter.” Back in the 1700s, a courier from the abbey in Fulda would carry the bishop’s permission to start the harvest on horseback to the abbey’s Johannisberg wine estate near Geisenheim in Rheingau. In 1775, the rider was delayed for two weeks, and the grapes had started to rot. They were harvested and processed anyway, and the resulting wine was surprisingly good and sweet – the “Spaetlese” or “late harvest wine” was born. The 230km-long Hessian cycle route R3 loosely tracks the rider’s path from the Fulda area to Rheingau, and we’re on it for just a few of them.
We are in the forest of named paths, and this one is Agendawaldschneise after the Agenda 21 initiative from the United Nations aimed at “combating deforestation, protecting fragile environments, and conservation of biological diversity.” The forest here was planted in accordance with Agenda 21 and is therefore also named Agendawald or “Agenda Forest.” An old friend of ours in the US thought Agenda 21 was something evil, well, I’m finding these forest paths and preservation of open lands simply charming.
This is not the Germany of old; people didn’t stop and talk with strangers, but that’s what’s happening today. The fluffy white Great Pyrenees caught the girls’ attention, and the owner was happy to tell them about the breed’s history and temperament.
Remember that reference to the Valkyries earlier? Well, we’re still playing that.
We ride and we ride into the green and into infinity or maybe just to the end of the trail.
Does it look like Caroline just worked incredibly hard at getting to this part of the ride? Well, it turns out that her e-bike computer malfunctioned and that she only had sporadic electric assistance, as in about 5 minutes in total so she had to put some serious effort into her pedaling while the rest of us just cruised along.
We dropped off the bikes, got a small refund for Caroline’s broken bike, and started walking towards a specialty ice cream shop in the Sachsenhausen area. Not that I know what marijuana looks like, but what the heck is the devil’s weed doing growing here streetside in Germany? Isn’t this still illegal? Now, if this were hash, well, I probably have more than a little experience with that.
A gaggle of paddle boarders on a sunset float on the Main River reminds me of, well, nothing as I’ve never seen this before here in Frankfurt, and at the time of this writing, I have nothing to compare it to.
Sculling on the calm waters of Frankfurt’s riverway is a popular repast, at least during seasonably appropriate weather. Caroline has voiced her interest in giving this a go someday, but it’s not going to happen this trip as though we can afford a good deal of spontaneity such as this day, we have a fairly heavy schedule for the next couple of weeks, or so I think.
What a conundrum this is, as I can’t be certain there’s ever really a sustainable and cruelty-free way to bring animals to our tables. It’s troublesome as I’m well aware of the violence committed on my behalf, so I can eat various types of meat at my convenience, and if I think about it too long, I’d be forced to reconsider my willful ignoring of animals’ grotesque suffering. If you can read the URL at the top of this photo and you haven’t seen the worst of animal harvesting practices, you might want to watch it, but be forewarned, it’s harsh.
The geese that call these riverbanks home are some seriously chill birds as I’ve never seen one of them charge a person, ever. The downside of so many geese is the voluminous amounts of squishy green finger-sized poops that dot the path and stairs along the way.
And so, this was another day, another bike ride as we celebrated the 6th day of a vacation that was shaping up as perfect.