Black Forest - Day 6 : From the campsite to Teufelsmühle and back

Finally, we had a day off after all those hard days of cycling. First, we registered at the campsite with a pretty grumpy guy. Later, we had breakfast and bought shower tokens. Then we went to the nearest village to buy food and postcards to send home. Bram bought a completely black card saying "Black Forest by night".

 

At the Penny store, we bought a lot of food because we were starving. Everything seemed tasty. We got a frozen plum pie, a watermelon, two breads, a few liters of juice, and other things. We wanted to sit in the park to eat the pie, go to the campsite to eat the watermelons, and then have the potatoes for dinner.
 

It turned out a bit different. The plum pie had to defrost for 5 hours so we couldn't eat it yet. We had nothing else for lunch that we could eat without cooking. Therefore, we went to the local baker to buy some fancy buns for the ride back. We bought so much we couldn't carry it all. I had to go back to the store just to buy a plastic bag. It took the women in the store 10 seconds to figure out that was all I needed. It was 9 cents. 

When we arrived at the campsite, we ate the melon while defrosting the pie in the sun. We also took out our towels so they could dry. We analyzed the other visitors while eating, which took quite some time. One guy was walking around with a huge smile, and his pants pulled up high. He also walked as if he needed to go to the bathroom badly and needed to... well, you figure it out. There also was a guy whose wife was clearly in it for the money. A bit later, they were reading a book, together. We ate the entire melon, even though it weighed 4,5 kg. Then it was time for the plum pie, which was an anticlimax after looking forward to it for 5 hours. I ate enough to notice its effect, though..

 

The sun shone the entire day, and we had nothing to do. We decided to cycle a little. Without luggage this time. We would ride to a lookout point a few kilometers away. It was 500 higher than the campsite. Cycling without baggage was a strange experience. You could just start and cycle 20 km/h immediately without needing to accelerate for a while first. Steering was tricky. With luggage, we need to really push our handlebars to change direction. It took 2 km before I wasn't swaying all across the street.

First, we needed to climb, then we descended again before climbing to Teufelsmühle, which was 890 meters high. It was very steep, and even without luggage, we didn't go up fast. There were people with brand new mountain bikes, but they had driven up  by car and only went downhill. After climbing for 6 km, we arrived at the summit. The last part was really steep; it might have been 20%. On top, you could parasail, and there was a lookout tower. There was also a great view over the Black Forest, you could clearly see where it ended because the landscape suddenly became flat. The tower was about 30 meters high. When walking down the stairs, we got a weird pudding feeling in our legs and knees because of all the cycling.
 

The descent that followed was the hardest thus far. The road wasn't very wide and could barely fit two cars. It was very steep as well, within a few seconds, we reached more than 40 km/h. We had to break hard for the first corner, as there were no railings and a steep drop. The corners were all razor sharp, but I still reached 68.2 km/h. After a while, I started braking just in case, which was a good thing because there was an unexpected turn that I only barely made. When you go that fast, it takes quite a while to decelerate. I approached the last turn way too fast. I could have braked as hard as possible, but then I would likely have fallen. Instead, I decided to just drive straight into the grass. When I turned around to look for Bram, I saw another cyclist who was probably surprised to see me fly by.

We had dinner at the campsite, which included an entire liter of pudding. We baked potatoes and burned the cooking pan. It took 15 minutes of scrubbing to clean it. In the evening, we went to the village to drink some beer. We planned to cycle a big loop through the Black Forest the following day.

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Distance cycled : 20 km