Here is the Relive-Video as overview on the tour:

Relive ‘Nagold Tal 6’

Here is our tour into the black forest form May 6th:

Relive ‘Nordschwarzwald Tour RSG’

Well known that the terrain before the “alp” is pretty hilly with a few rather steep climbs. But at the beginning of the tour, that’s OK. As usual, I planned the tour through small side streets and bike-ways, so we could enjoy the scenery. From Neuffen there is the climb up the Alp, with 250m altitude and 6-9% ascent. A bit of a challenge, but we are fit enough by now. We were up so early, around 11:15, that we decided to visit the old castle “ruin” of Hohen Neuffen.

I cannot remember having been here… and was very pleasantly surprised. Not only the view is great, the “ruin” Burg Hohen Neuffen is being renovated carefully, so it looks like a ruin from far away, but insight is a Restaurant and you can even rent the place for company or private events, especially for weddings this is a great place.

Then we saw birds, buzzards and hawks, on one of the elevated places. On Sundays and holidays, there is a falconer show there. So we didn’t take long to decide to stay and watch the show. Being here so early, waiting 20 minutes would be worth it. The show was planned for 12:00 with about 45 min. duration. It was fantastic!!! The Falconer Wolfgang Weller not only ran a great show with his birds, with hunting at highest speed, he also explained a lot of very interesting facts about the birds. Where they are from, how it works to “tame” and control them, and how they hunt in free nature. A real highlight!

Well, from there on, the rest is quickly told. We returned via Bad Urach and Metzingen into the valley of the Neckar and then upwards via Kirchentellinsfurth and Pfrondorf. In total the tour was 120km with 1130m altitude and average speed of 25,6 km/h (Tour at GPSies).

So why not create a “Around Stuttgart Special” tour and ride the official track, but from “Böblingen to Böblingen”, great idea, right?

Thought, agreed, done: So we started at our club-house at 10:00, through the Aichtal at pretty high speed until Grötzingen where the tour started to go on roads that I didn’t know, as this is not my typical area. But with the RTF signs at every turn, it was easy to follow the roads until Untertürkheim through nice sceneries. Arrived at the start/finish area after about 50km, where we made a short break.

Then we started again and followed a sign “Tour A und B this direction”… OK, so we climbed the Rotenberg which is one of the nice hills in Stuttgart, about 200m altitude, with a great view over Stuttgart. Once being here, this is a view that you must enjoy:

A small issue with that. This was not the official route. We must have missed a turn, so climbing up here was not really intentional. OK, same way back down. Checked the GPS track on the smartphone… shortly after the sign we had missed a turn left. OK, next try. A few kilometers through the vineyards … until the next road crossing. No RTF sign, checking the SmartPhone, we are on the right track. What’s up now? Well, after short thinking it became clear. The official start was planned until 9:00, but we were at the start only at 12:00 as we had left Böblingen only at 10:00. So the organizers had already started to remove the signs. Clearly my fault, bad planning.

So at first, I started to check the Smartphone at every road crossing that was unclear. But that doesn’t work well, you have to stop each time and wait, that is not “road bike” like. But Martin, one of our team, had a bike-GPS mounted and had done this tour already some 8 years ago, and still had the old tour stored. The old tour was a bit different, but at least this would allow us to follow directions without stopping.

For the next few kilometers we first had to find to the right road of the old route and missed a few turns, so we stumbled across some of the outer parts of Stuttgart, until we reached the right track. Around Fellbach and Kornwestheim, the old route used a lot of main roads, so we had quite a lot of traffic. After about 20km we reached “outside Stuttgart” around Münchingen, Hemmingen and Heimerdingen, and things went much better. Very nice scenery again.

Shortly before we reached Magstadt, we followed known roads again, but I was a bit surprised about the road there. I already knew that after many, many years of construction work, the last bit of the new B464 was finished. However there was no side-road, and the B464 is like Autobahn, so we HAD to cycle almost one kilometer on the B464 until we could leave it and enter Magstadt. This is a bit strange. So here we left the official RTF track, as we all started to be a bit tired and wanted to take the shortest route back to Böblingen. After all, here is our home-turf.

Despite the extra-tours in Stuttgart, I think it was a nice tour, the views over Stuttgart on such a nice day were worth it. But next year we either have to prepare better by loading the official GPS track on a bike navigator,… or we don’t do the tour this day again.

Back home, I had 132,2km, 1.340m altitude with an average speed of  23,9km/h recorded. Not bad, I think we’ll all sleep well tonight.

So we started out at 10, still a little cold. After the first downhill, the first real UPhill section, from Station Teinach to Sommenhardt helped to warm up. The typical black forest terrain, up, down, up, down, … helps to stay warm further

We reached Simmersfeld early enough, shortly after 1pm. I had announce that here we can decide how to continue… as we felt OK, we decided for the slightly longer tour. So we took the downhill to Enzklösterle, nice and freshly paved, I was here 2-3 years ago the last time. The uphill via the “Poppeltal” is not steep, rolling upwards easily pedaling.

After the next downhill part, we reach Erzgrube, where we can refresh with some cake, coffee, and typical local mixed fruit drink (“Schorle”). Re-charged, we continue the fast way down to Altensteig, Nagold, Wildberg… we had enough hills now. Just a last climb via Gültlingen to Deckenpfronn and then rolling home.

In summary: 161,9km with 24,5 kmh average 1545m altitude.

I think all of us liked it, for sure I did!

(German version including GPS-Track also on our RSG-Website)