Budapest by Bicycle Stage I ..... From Stuttgart into the Black Forest

I set off early morning in magic weather, but it had got cold overnight and downhill in 7 degC through dark shady forests soon had my toes and fingers uncomfortably numb. No wonder no-one else is riding in shorts and sandals!

Stuttgart is a very green city and you're never more than 15 minutes from a forest or park. The cycleway through the heavy industrial harbour area is amazingly full of trees and views only of river and forest. It gets a bit built out around Ploechingen, but from Tuebingen south, the ride up the Neckar valley is very pretty, with lots of castles, forests and quaint little fachwerkhaus villages like Horb and Rottweil.

It took me two and a half days and 280km to make my way to the source of the Neckar and across to Donaueschingen, the source of the Danube at KM2840 to start my journey. These two springs are only a handful of kilometres away from each other, but one flows to the North Sea, the other to the Black Sea.