Day 7-8 Along the Saale to Halle

For the next two days we travelled roughly 160km, following the Saale through Thüringen  to Halle where we changed direction leaving  the Saale to head towards Magdeburg, where we joined the Elbe, the third  river we follow for some distance on this trip.

Cycling along the Saale proved to be another highlight of the tour. I will definitely go back to this area to explore a little more,  again I can honestly say I fell in love with this area. For me it has everything, history, castles, beautiful bike routes, hills (not too big), quirky towns, interesting buildings, rivers, lakes, vineyards, orchards, humour and a  relaxed energy. for example, I hardly saw a single cyclist wearing a tricot let alone matching ones like some of the intense cyclists we crossed on  our first days along the stretch of the Danube.

What struck me the most as we cycled through this area were the fruit trees. Their branches were heavy with ripe fruit, most of which had  fallen to the ground, left to rot. Apple, pear, peach, plum, and mirabelle trees were everywhere, and there were walnut trees too, although their nuts weren’t quite ready for harvest. The hedgerows were equally abundant, filled with sloe, elderberries, hawthorn, hazelnuts, and blackberries.

We noticed a few people gathering the fruit. One man, in particular, caught our attention—he stayed just ahead of us the entire time. At every peach tree, he would stop, pick a handful of fruit, tuck them into his rucksack, and cycle off to the next tree. Watching him became an amusing part of the morning.

The Saale river is  great  for canoeists, we stayed a night near a village called Camburg at an old Wasserwerk https://www.saalerastplatz.de/ a very cool place. When we arrived it was empty but slowly it filled up with groups of canoeists from Jena heading towards Bad Kösen or Naumburg. It was funny to watch them put up their tents, you could tell that for most  it was the first time doing so.  To stay there, you book and pay for your stay online, there's a kiosk that serves only vegetarian or vegan food but it's not open every day, you can get drinks and cake, it has basic showers and toilet, everything you need. It's simply full of people enjoying themselves ...and  massive spiders, but they wont eat you, everything is fine.

The area is even more perfect for cyclists and Thüringen is proud of this!  It has  hills, great views, trails, interesting surfaces that included, sandy dust trails, cement tracks and cobbles. The road surfaces are really something else here with so many villages having winky  wonky wavy streets  laid with cobble stones that have become misshapen over time, they're real bone shakers! You can see that nothing has been invested into maintaining the roads in these villages, but that only adds to the charm. Some of the villages and towns we passed through had cute names like Tümpling, Kaatschen. Saalek, Bad Kösen, Grosjena, Kleinjena, and just Jena. For some reason Jena itself did not leave a big impression on me as we cycled through, although it's famous for Zeiss optics, Friedrich Schiller University and the Jen tower. We didn't go and look at any of these things, perhaps that was our mistake, but it I was not inspired,  the nature around Jena was for me more interesting. I enjoyed more  the castles and churches of Merseyburg and Neuenburg.