Day 8: Mammem to Feldkirch

Today was a 4 country day! We passed through Swizerland, Germany, Lichtenstein and Austria.

Despite the plums missing the tent, 3 of the team hardly slept last night because some Swiss folk in an adjacent camper van had a party until about 2pm, and with 3 churches within hearing range we were serenaded by bells on the hour every hour. John C slept like a baby throughout and awoke refreshed, wondering why the others looked so bleary eyed!

We emerged to find a really heavy dew had soaked everything, and the low cloud and mist meant we had a slow wet pack up. We headed off and immediately discovered a small problem. It turned out that there was a big team cycling event going on around the lake. This would have been fine, except they were going round clockwise... and we were going anti-clockwise! As the racers weren't expecting us, some of them weren't really looking out for moving obstacles, so there were some interesting problems avoiding on-coming cyclists.

A group photo with a little perspective trick that somehow makes Jeremy look even taller than normal.

Luckily, we emerged unscathed and went into Konstanz itself - which is how we went back into Germany as the town is across the border. Then we crossed a narrow spit of land between 2 parts of the lake which gave us fantastic views over the water and of the many sailing boats.

Taking the cycle paths around the lake gave us a pleasant, mainly traffic-free ride, but it did slow us down as the road weaved around quite a bit and some parts were gravel rather than tarmac which really saps the speed. The weather was sunny by now, and we found a lovely lunch spot on the shore, with a picnic table and plenty of room for us to spread out all our wet stuff to dry. We're not sure that the couple trying to have a romantic picnic there were pleased by our arrival, but they did appear to have arrived on a tandem, so maybe they understood even though they studiously ignored us.

After lunch came a substantial climb up to St Gallen - a very picturesque town with great views across the lake on the way. Then we picked up another road from there going towards Trogen, which gave us another big climb. This eventually mellowed into a high-level undulating ride through meadows to the sound of cow bells. You almost expected Julie Andrews to come running through the pastures singing! The route topped of at the Ruppenpass at 1003m - though it was another of those anonymous passes, without a height sign. John H said it didn't feel very anonymous!

The route descended 600m (fun!) to a plateau containing the Rhine. The views from there were spectacular - flat land in front of us with the Alps rising out of it in the distance (and the "Yikes, that's where we are headed next" thoughts running around our brains...). After a while we reached a town called Altstatten where we had decided to pick up a road south, as this gave us the chance to go into Lichtenstein. Unfortunately, our talent for disaster caught up with us again. First, we had hoped to pick up food, but the shops were all shut. Secondly, there was a huge running race on and thirdly the race was using the road we'd hoped to take and was all barricaded off. Fortunately an official let us through one barrier, then 2 other marshals helped us to find an alternative route, but it still took us half an hour to leave! We had time to appreciate that the race leaders were going at an impressive speed.

All the delays meant that we finally reached Lichtenstein at 7.15pm. For the record, it took us 15 minutes to cross it! We then had a quick sprint to get into Austria before it was too dark to put up our tents. Fortunately we reached Feldkirch at 7.40pm, just in time to be met by a very friendly campsite host and managed to put up the tents just before dark.

The B Team in action on the climb towards St Gallen, with John C bringing up the rear.

John H is remarkably unscathed. The rest of the us are impressed by how he kept up, not having had the week's riding we had, having had little time to do practice rides and never having ridden with laden panniers! Tomorrow - the A team knows it has to face some really big climbing. The B team has to work out how to retrace his steps in an interesting way to get back to Zurich in one piece and avoid doing an extra 10 miles in the airport car park. We wish him a safe journey and wish he could have been with us for longer.

Vital Statistics

112.7km / 70.8miles, 6 hours 2 minutes in the saddle, climb 1091m, 4773 calories used, 18.6kph average speed, Max speed 47.4kph.