Category: Travel

My grandmother pointed out in a email that I hadn’t talked much about the other people along on this tour, so here’s a very general introduction! The group is roughly 50 people, but we’ve sorted out pretty much by language.

First is the French-speakers, mostly actually from France, including our hard working chef du course Marc, who works for the AF3V, a French organization that helps organize cycle routes, including the long distance international EuroVelo routes like the EV6 that we’re following. Overall there are about twenty French, with a number of them only doing a few weeks of the ride instead of the whole route, which included a few Belgians who were with us the first week or two of the ride.

The French include a sub-group of three polio survivors and their support riders. The polio survivors are all riding hand pedaled lightweight trikes – I’ll get a photo up when I can, they’re fascinating machines.

The next largest group is about 19 strong and are all from Hong Kong,  a number of whom don’t even speak much English, nevermind other European languages.

Finally there are currently ten English speakers, five Yanks, two Brits, a Kiwi couple, and some arrogant twit from Canada.

During the day when we’re riding we tend to ride in groups of two to six or so. Bigger groups of cyclists tend to be awkward, in my experience. We tend to sort by both language and riding ability/comfortable cruising speed on the road.

Short and straightforward ride through Switzerland today, mostly along the Rhine from Schafhausen to a farm near Bad Zurzach.

“Schlaf im Stroh” means “sleep in straw”, and I originally thought it was just the name of the B&B/lodging program for Swiss farms, but here with the Schneider family outside Bad Zurzach it really does give you the chance to sleep on straw: clean straw packed into frames in the loft of a converted barn. The ground floor is a very nicely set up group dining room and washrooms, and there is also space on the lawn for tents.

It’s still a working farm, too, with a couple types of cows (including a herd of hairy Highland cattle), crops, and a couple of goats.

Good weather for most of the day, except for a short but very intense rain squall which we could see coming up the valley toward us in time to retreat to the covered cafe terrace of a local thermal bath/rec centre. We had an afternoon coffee and watched it piss down for about half an hour then stop, which was much nicer than riding through it!

Random biking in Switzerland moment from today: rolling through the forest just above the Rhine (which is the Swiss-German border as well) and turn the corner to see a substantial concrete bunker, still in very functional shape, peering over the river toward Germany.

We had a chance to briefly meet one of the senior people in SwissMobility, Lucas, who joined us for the day’s ride. Hopefully he got some good feedback from us on what we’ve seen here in Switzerland and earlier on the trip.

Off to another lodging farm in Switzerland tomorrow, then finally France on Saturday when we pass through Basel and spend the night in Mulhouse, France.

Left Germany this morning, starting with a 20km or so ride from our Protestant hostel to Uberlingen, then down the shores of the Bodensee to Meersburg, where we caught a small car ferry to Constance, which is still in Germany but right against the Swiss frontier.

The ride from Constance along the Rhine to Schafhausen was really nice, through the usual mix of small villages, the occasional small town, farmland, and a couple of pieces of woods.

The Swiss have a well marked series of cycle routes which are generally simple to follow, and so far Swiss drivers seem as generally well housebroken as their German and Austrian counterparts, with the usual slight question mark for delivery drivers and any Audi you see…

We’re staying in a very interesting hostel inside Schloss Laufen, which is directly beside and above the famous Rheinfall, where the entire Rhine crashes over a really dramatic waterfall. The hostel is… old-fashioned. Really genuinely antique, there are ten people in our room in a sort of massive bunk with five on the top deck and five below. Apparently one of the rooms on the ground floor has eighteen in it. It really is like they set this place up in the 1920s (or possibly earlier…) and haven’t changed a thing since.

Also, Switzerland makes the rest of Europe look cheap. More on that later…

Off deeper into Switzerland tomorrow, to some sort of farm hostel further along the Rhine. No idea if WiFi will be available, so this place might get quite for a day or three.

We left the Danube behind today and climbed up and out of it’s valley and to the Bodensee (Lake Constance).

We had been warned about the climb up and over from the Danube to the Bodensee, but the route we chose (largely by accident) involved a slightly longer route but a much, much shallower, easier climb.

The descent on the Bodensee side was awesome, several kilometres of descent on easy, curving nearly car free back roads.

We’re staying in a Protestant-run hostel about five km outside Uberlingen. Uberlingen has, unfortunately, the worst drivers we’ve seen since starting the ride: aggressive, crowding and acting most unlike the housebroken, polite road-sharing drivers we’ve gotten used to!

Comparing this Protestant-run hostel to the two Catholic ones we’ve stayed at, the Catholics are coming out ahead so far. They have far more interesting buildings in better locations and slightly better food; the Protestants have better WiFi…

Tomorrow we’re off into Switzerland, which is a first for me, and we start with a ferry ride across the Bodensee, which should be fun.