Romantic Road: Wurzburg to Nordlingen

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Wurzburg

   Würzburg lies on the Main in Lower Franconia, in the middle of a landscape of vineyards, and it is the northern start of the Romantic Road, the touring route that runs through Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg to Füssen in the Alps. The city has around a hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants, a university that dates back to the fifteenth century and a great Baroque palace, the Residenz, built in the eighteenth century for the prince-bishops by the architect Balthasar Neumann. Its staircase has a ceiling fresco by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, said to be the largest in the world, and the whole building is a World Heritage site.

   Read the complete Wurzburg write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Wurzburg is where the day begins. Next is Tauberbischofsheim.

2. 2. Tauberbischofsheim

   Tauberbischofsheim has produced more Olympic fencers than most countries. The town in the Tauber valley is Germany's fencing capital, with a club and training centre that has trained generations of champions, among them Thomas Bach, who won gold in the team foil at the 1976 Olympics and later became president of the International Olympic Committee. In a quiet place, the occasional clink of blades from a training hall is a surprise.

   Read the complete Tauberbischofsheim write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Tauberbischofsheim comes up about 54 km into the recorded legs. Next is Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

3. 3. Rothenburg ob der Tauber

   Rothenburg ob der Tauber looks like a film set because, for a long time, it had no choice. The medieval town stands on a ridge above the Tauber valley in Franconia, enclosed by an almost complete ring of walls with towers and gates, and its timber houses, steep roofs and cobbled lanes have survived because the town lost its wealth after the Thirty Years War and could not afford to rebuild. It was too poor to modernise, and so it stayed old. Today it draws visitors in large numbers, and the main streets can be packed with tour groups by mid-morning.

   Read the complete Rothenburg ob der Tauber write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 143 km into the recorded legs you reach Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Next is Dinkelsbuhl.

4. 4. Dinkelsbuhl

   Dinkelsbühl is the one that makes people stop talking mid-sentence when they ride through the gate. A complete medieval wall rings the old town, with towers, a moat of lawns and a maze of lanes of gabled houses painted in butter and rose, and the whole thing came through the Second World War largely untouched. It lies on the Wörnitz in western Bavaria, a town of about twelve thousand people on the Romantic Road, which makes it a natural place to start or end a day on that famous route.

   Read the complete Dinkelsbuhl write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Dinkelsbuhl, late in the day. Next is Nordlingen.

5. 5. Nordlingen

   Nördlingen sits in the middle of a hole in the ground, and the hole was made from space. About fourteen and a half million years ago, a meteorite crashed into this part of southern Germany and left a crater about twenty-five kilometres wide, the Ries, now a gently bowl-shaped plain of fields, villages and low hills. Nördlingen was built inside it, in a perfect circle, and the medieval wall that surrounds it is almost round, the only fully preserved ring wall in Germany that you can walk along the top of. The walk takes about an hour.

   Read the complete Nordlingen write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Finish at Nordlingen. That is the ride.