Day 6 - Pairis to Todtnau

Blogger support would like to apologise in advance for any spelling errors in today's blog. These will be the result of a phone line that mushed consonants + my unfamiliarity with the Geography of this bit. So - here goes...

Today was an extraordinarily hard day. We started early and quickly reached Colmar in lovely weather, but as we approached the German border, we could see massive black clouds glowering over the Black Forest, right above the area we were aiming for - and we would find that they were as nasty as they looked.

On the way up to "La Ligne"in nice weather.

The morning route we took to Colmar ran along the top of a ridge called "La Ligne" that had obviously been a major front in the First World War, because we kept passing war memorials at the roadside. It was sobering, and made us think about the sacrifice of all those soldiers and how lucky we are to be free to do what we are doing now.

One of the many war memorials on the ridge.

View back over the typical high rolling landscape of the Vosges.

We crossed into Germany over the Rhine floodplain. It was much wider than Jeremy had imagined it would be, and the river surprisingly large, with a channel made to divert some of the flow to a hydro-electric dam, as well as the navigable river which was full of barges. The actual crossing of the border was celebrated by Mother Nature with an astonishing torrential downpour - hail, thunder and lightening -the works. We tried sheltering under a tree next to the church in Ihringen to stay dry whilst we ate our lunch, but it rained so hard that in the end we were getting as wet as if we'd been out in the storm. In the midst of this, Roy still managed to change his brake blocks!

Crossing the hydro-electric channel of the Rhine, just before the deluge.

Fortunately the hail and thunder stopped fairly early in the proceedings, but when we set out for Freiburg, the first half hour was stunningly wet with roads awash and all of us completely soaked through with water sloshing in our shoes. At this point, Jeremy would like to remind Chris, if he's reading this, that he promised to double his sponsorship if the weather was bad!

We reached the outskirts of Freiburg at around 3pm, now mostly dry, but the change of country really hit home as we realised that all the road signs were very different from the French style, and the way that they portrayed information was really unfamiliar. We eventually managed to reach the Centre through following cycle routes (slow) and finally working out the signs. There we briefly appreciated the picturesque Cathedral before noticing the rather nice looking food shop next to it which took our attention for a while.

Then we tried to leave Freiburg and failed several times to do so... initially because we found the route we had hoped to take (to save time a more main route than usual that cut out a climb and some wiggles) was a 'bikes forbidden' route. This forced us to revert to Plan A - a quiet road that just happened to have a major climb in it. But then we couldn't find the right road and it had become late enough for rush hour to start. Ironically, at one point on our way into town we had stopped at a cycle shop to see if they had any maps of the region as we felt ours weren't detailed enough, and they had tried to sell us a map of Freiburg, which we'd turned down! We eventually got on the correct route out of town with the help of a map we bought in a petrol station and then, breaking the stereotype yet again, asking a passerby (asked in German, reply in German and understood!), but we were very behind schedule at this point - it was just after 5pm and we faced a steep 16 km (10 mile) climb to the Schauinsland Pass (over 1200m) - and we didn't reach the top until 7pm!

View of rain over the Rhine Valley with the Vosges in the background.

The view at the top of the Col. Looks as wintry as it felt.

We'd hoped to stop at Birkendorf for the evening, but quickly abandoned that idea, so we made the fast descent looking for somewhere to stay as we went. We did pass a campsite near the top of the descent but it looked pretty windswept and chilly, plus we were going so fast we were about a kilometre past it before we knew it. And that is why we find ourselves tonight in a hotel in Todtnau. That's our excuse and we're sticking to it.

So what have we learned today? Well - we found out that Roy can even manage fiddly tasks in a monsoon. John has resolved to make sure in future that the navigator has any map he wants (in advance presumably). And Jeremy has finally worked out why he has so little free time on a cycling trip, "Well, if we're not cycling, we're either eating or looking for food or thinking about where we can look for food..."

We are particularly looking forward to Day 7. John H, who was part of the original group, but unable to make the tour because of other commitments, is coming out to join us for a weekend's cycling. We're hoping to rendezvous with him around 3pm, and we're also delighted to see that he's bringing good weather with him. The forecast is for a pleasantly warm and sunny day.

Vital Statistics
113km, 6 hours 15mins in saddle, climbed 1508m, 70.31miles, 5776 calories used.