Leaving France

Once I realised I was in France for a single day I just had to buy bread. The bread in France, in my experience so far, is always really nice. Luckily for me the only thing I had to do was to roll down a hill and I was at the bakery Chez Fred in Schwindratzheim. I bought some baguettes, something sweet and a coffee for 5.15 euros (you couldn't get a "pain du rustique du passion et amour" at Albert Heijn for that money). The bread was absolutely delicious. Anyway, reason that I mention all of this is that while I was planning the rest of the route on their tiny little terrace, the baker came out with a set of bagels and said something along the lines of "monsieur, for your tour". So that was a great start of the day!

Within a couple of minutes I was at the canal that leads to Strasbourg I mentioned in the previous post. I saw some signs saying it was an Eurovelo route, which explained the rather large nunber of touring cyclists I saw. Among the fellow cyclists, on some bridge along that canal, I started talking to an elderly couple. They warned me of the riots in Strasbourg (which I took seriously, but I also assumed that those poor rioters were sleeping during the day after their hard work), and told me of easy cycling between Offenburg and Gengenbach.

And with that in my mind I continued the journey to Strasbourg. Once there I spent a little bit of time cycling around and looking at the city. If I wouldn't had other plans already I would've probably spent a day or two there (and even if I didn't have plans, I don't know how bad those riots are at night). I did spend some time calling the aforementioned "special friend", who assured me that "special friend" was definitely not the correct term, and that I should come up with other schemes if I want to keep this person anonymous for the rest of the world. It is only while I'm spellchecking this that I realise that I could just call her my girlfriend. Those who know me then know who she is, and those who don't, well, don't. I'll leave this entire discussion in as a testament to my stupidity

To the black forest

Now I regularly eat mountains for breakfast and drink gravel during the day, but my poor knees wanted me to make this an easy day. And so I took the advice of the elderly couple and cycled along the "Kinzig" for the rest of the day. The day ended at slightly elevated altitude, in order to be able to find a nice place to go wildcamping. Amazing how much easier (not always, mind you) it has become to find a nice place to camp if you have access to GPS and offline maps with contour lines on your phone; makes it easy to know if there are any trees and where the ground is relatively flat.

The next days I wanted to head into the mountains again, and so I did. It was relatively uneventful, but very beautiful, so I'll just leave you with some pictures.

I was left wondering about why it is so much fun to cycle in the mountains. I certainly didn't like it on my first bicycle trip. But something made me like it along the way. Nowadays, sometimes, I start smiling the moment I see my route is taking me uphill (although not on an empty stomach, and not if I already had 1000m of elevation gain that day). If I'm being romantic about it I would say that traveling over a mountain provides one with impressive views over the surrounding lands. But it could also have a more mechanical explanation: maybe I'm conditioned to know that heading into the mountains provides exercise, and the exercise makes me happy through the chemicals that are released by it. I suppose the answer lies in the middle, somewhere. But I'd love to know.

Into Switzerland

The last day in the black forest was just perfect! I got up, went down to some incredibly touristic village (I mean it was swarming with groups of people who were obviously tourists and got in by bus or something). Now normally I would've hated such a place, but there was this one market stand in the main square that sold vegetables and fruits at normal prices. So I ordered whatever I needed, together with a jar of homemade jam that was, as I would later find out, just what the doctor ordered. It was delicious! Also, upon spellchecking: figured out that Holunderblute means Elderberry (Vlierbloesem), so it was Elderberry jam. The owner also, and I only noticed later, gave me some free apricots!

So I continued my journey, had the first little ascent of the day, where I was able to help someone out with adjusting derailleur limit screws because the chain kept flying off the cogs. As a reward I was reminded how nice the weather was, which I didn't really appreciate up until that point (apparently it was 40 degrees a week ago).

In the next little town I remembered I couldn't leave the black forest without eating Schwarzwaldsr Kirschentorte, and so I had some. While eating it I had a nice conversarion with an elderly man. After talking too long I said my goodbyes (because I wanted to reach Switzerland).

And so I had my second ascent of the day over forest tracks. While ascending I found a cabinet of homemade honey (from Schwarzwalder wildflowers, according to the label) where I bought a little jar. Then managed to refill my bottles with cold water at one of those little mountain fountains, which I always find rather enjoyable. The water there just tastes better (and I don't care if its the same stuff out of the tap, it just tastes better).

And just as I thought I wouldn't be able to get to Switzerland that day, I found out that the two remaining sections of the route were actually downhill! For the past days I had been subconciously teaching myself that contour lines on a map meant that you would have to go uphill, and was pleasantly reminded that one can also go in the other vertical direction. I had a really nice descent along the Schwarza valley, followed by a climb, and then an even larger descent along the Alb valley!

And so I arrived at Albbruck, cycled to Laufenburg, and then cycled into Switzerland over the river Rhine. Quite a coincidence that the river Rhine flows just on the border between Germany and Switzerland! I would've loved to make some impressive pictures, but wasn't able to (close to the border was just a Lidl, the border building was a boring customs building, and the sun prevented me from taking a nice picture of the Rhine). So instead, here are some nice flowers and a picture of me pretending like I didn't just set a timer on my camera and then ran over to the bench like an idiot.

Pretty certain that last picture is from the Alb valley.

It was just the perfect little day filled with lots of nice little coincidences.

Anyway, then I rather quickly found a nice spot to camp, had a nice dinner, and am now listening to the Swiss cowbells in the distance. Here's to hoping that cows aren't nocturnal!