Stepping off the train in Aalen, I started heading east. The first hour of the ride was by and large rather dull, but also anticipated the tiresome head wind that I would be facing for much of the rest of the day. After an hour I reached Lauchheim, passing through the charming town gates (left). Looking at my map, I realized that I had 
already come about half-way to my ultimate destination, so I decided to take a short diversion to the north and visit the origin of the Jagst River. Located just outside the sleepy little village of Walxheim, there is a modest picnic spot under a stand of beech trees, all clustered around a small spring, which is the source of the Jagst. This flows some 200-odd km through the Schwaebisch Alb, running to the north of Stuttgart, finally joining the Neckar river just after the Kocher. Washing my face in the surprisingly strong-flowing spring waters, I tasted the salty sweat of my exertions. The view below is looking south.
I now turned east again towards Unterschneidheim, before heading south to the edge of the Ries. The Ries is a large depression in the eastern Alb, roughly circular with a diameter of 24km. It is, in fact, one of the most recent large meteorite impact craters in the world, formed an estimated 14.8 million years ago (perhaps even causing a miniature extinction event). My destination was the town of Kircheim am Ries, which lies at the western rim of the crater. Approaching the rim, the landscape appears to buckle, forming a ridge before dropping down into a shallow, flat valley. This ridge runs through Kircheim; to the west of the town there is a particularly high point with the stunning view below. This isn't actually accessible by bicycle, so I had to scramble up the last 50 metres of the hill on foot.
Sitting there eating my lunch, the full scale of what once happened here began to sink in. The Ries is dizzyingly enourmous - the estimates on wikipedia speak of an explosion 6 orders of magnitude greater than that which destroyed Hiroshima, i.e. roughly 25 billion tons of TNT. To put that into perspective, this is (probably) comparable to detonating the entire US or Russian nuclear arsenal in one place simultaneously. The ejecta from this impact can be found as far away as the Czech Republic. Europe would have taken centuries to recover from this blow. But it is a mere baby compared to the Chicxulub crater which wiped out the dinosaurs (180km in diameter). Without the crutch of numbers, the mind recoils from the full implications of such destruction. Nothing like it has ever been seen in human history, and we must fervently hope that nothing like it ever will.
I now descended into the Ries, curving south-eastwards along the edge. I did not have to travel too far before crossing the border in Bavaria, just outside of the town of Riesbuerg. I'd cross back into Baden-Wuerttemburg a little later, and then finally back into Bavaria for the rest of the day. Somewhat strangely, I did not notice any sign announcing the change of state. The point where I crossed the border for the last time was just before I came to the site of an ancient Roman farmstead, of which today only the foundations remain (shown left). I didn't stop for very long, however, but instead pushed on eastwards to the site of the Battle of Noerdlingen (1634).It's hard to pick a worse strategy than to attack a superior force on the top of a hill, but that is what the ill-fated Swedes attempted against the Spanish at Noerdlingen. With my bicycle the climb was very difficult, but I was
unencumbered by armour or terror. At the top there is a simple stone cairn marking the site of the slaughter. Standing there on that centuries-old battlefield, I tried to imagine the horror of that day. Wars back then were very intimate affairs - swords and pikes only work at close range. Today we expect that the wounded can be somehow repaired; not then. It is easy to know, but difficult to believe, that 20000 men not completely unlike me lay dead or dying here on a September evening so many years ago. There are no perfectly-arranged rows of white crosses; no reverential ceremonies of remembrance; there is no record of the dead; the last woman to mourn a young man who died here herself turned to dust centuries ago. Standing there, looking out over the beautiful and peaceful early-Spring panorama, I felt almost choked by a deep sadness.
I now pushed on towards the southern-most rim of the Ries, just behind the village of Moenchsdeggingen, although I wasn't too impressed by the small hill which passed for the crater rim that I saw there. As the afternoon was already growing old, I decided to turn north-east and cycle into Noerdlingen. This leg was perhaps the most pleasant of the day, as finally I had the wind behind me, and it was only 40 minutes later that I sailed through the town gates into the old centre. I had two hours to explore the city before my train left, and it would prove to be one of the highlights of the day.
Noerdlingen is really a little jewel. An exceptionally well-preserved medieval town, it is also sufficiently remote that it doesn't attract hordes of tourists. At the centre of the city stands the magnificent St-Georgs-Kirche. I climbed to the top of the spire, where I met a curious old man who 
apparently lives as a caretaker at the top. After a brief little conversation, I climbed the final set of step to admire the breathtaking panoramic views, which you can see below (top is looking to the east, bottom is looking to the west). After descending I headed towards the city wall - Noerdlingen is one of only three cities in Germany where the medieval city wall still stands completely intact. There are several gates on this wall, each built in a different style, of which you can see a cylindrical example on the left. The walk along the
city wall (completely free) was delightful - expansive panoramas over the city, and glimpses of lush, cool gardens in the moat below. There are also two rather cute trivial facts about Noerdlingen - it is one of the sister cities of Wagga Wagga (see the sign on the right) and it also featured prominently in the 1971 film "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" - in the final scene, when Charlie, his grandfather and Willy Wonka ride above the city in Wonka's flying elevator, the views of the city below are of... Noerdlingen!
