Not in Wageningen

If you think the picture looks a little dull, that is because it is pouring hard with rain. Not in Wageningen Very hard. I was visiting a colleague who is lucky enough to live in the Nature Park Spessart (a little to the east of Frankfurt) and who was kind enough to lend me his bike for a few hours.  Despite the serious quantities of rain, I managed nearly 40 km and 1000 height meters.  What you cannot see on the photograph, is that just behind me, there was a scattering of bones and entrails of about half a dozen rabbits.  Odd.  I guessed first that it was maybe a place where the buzzards took their prey to eat, but later my wife had the more likely idea that probably hunters put the rabbits out as bait for foxes. I followed a route that was mostly based on the Hochspessart tour from bikewald.de. At first I was a bit disappointed as it followed the road, but it turned out that was just for the first bit and a relatively easy way of gaining some height.  After that it was off road all the way, some forestry track, but also a lot of singletrack through the woods, including some technically challenging steep sections with drop-offs and wet roots. I don't mind admitting that seeing I was by myself on a loaned bike, I walked some of the tricky bits. It was in any case good to ride over some properly steep hills.