12 Day 3 Journey to Germany

Up early-ish today, but seeing as we’re in France the breakfast starts ½ hour later on a Monday (to stretch the weekend off for the workers it seems!).  

On the bikes and off by 8.30 and it’s still trying to hang onto the dark of the night. Milder today, but overcast and threatening rain.

That promise stays with us, but is never realised, so that by late morning the sun comes out and the road start to dry nicely.  Dogs all under control today and Richard the 1st even stops to allow a lady to pick up her dog and walk across the road.  Richard was telling us yesterday how he was bitten recently by a dog in Germany and just how incredibly painful that experience was.

We stopped in St Die en Vosges for lunch, guess what Al had…. Not difficult is it? …. Pizza a ‘vegetarianne’ version.  Al was taken by surprise, he was convinced that the French didn’t have a word for mushroom-munching-tree-hugging-yoghurt-knitter types in their vocabulary  : )

We cross over into Germany and we’ve passed over a big dam (River Mosell) and hydro electric station  I swear I heard Al singing the dam-busters theme tune and saying how ‘ha we could sort this one out’…

The roads start to get very interesting and technical now as we start to enter the Black Forest area. Sharp hair-pin bends, steep hills, wet patches on the roads, shadows from overhanging trees gravel patches and mud…. Oh and did I mention the placing of cobbles on the hairpin bends (no warnings either!!)?

One of the guys says to Al ‘You were enjoying yourself there on the hills and bends weren’t you? – making some good progress’  Al said, ‘actually no, I hate roads like that, bend, bend, bend and no view of what’s around them, or what’s coming at you’  The guy looked surprised, as if the mystery of what is around the corner was part of the attraction….

We land in Haslach for our first of three nights at the ‘Storchen’ hotel.  I think that means Stork in english.

It’s a bit of a strange one.  Our room has orange rag-painted walls with blue doors. The doors are painted with images of dragons, butterflies, snails and water creatures. There are children night-time story books on the desk, a music centre and a TV.  Are we in a child’s room?  It looked a perfect candidate for one of those ‘Hotel Inspector’ programmes you see.  We chat the next day about our different themed rooms.

The bikes are all tucked away in a local lock-up for the night and we meet up with our new arrival ‘Paul08’.  He’s joined us late as he lives in Germany, he’s English and his wife is German.  Al said at least we now have a cultural ambassador with us who can speak the language,  er not me he says, hardly anyone understands my german, not even the wife!

After the evening meal and a coupe of pints it’s an early night.  Richard the 1^st is plotting something for tomorrow, though I don’t know what he means.  He explains that German is a very precise language and no room for understanding is given at times.  He said ‘take the time you’ve arranged breakfast – half-eight;  that could mean half of eight, so 4am, or more likely they’ll see it as half prior to eight, so that’ll be 7.30am…!’ – so who knows what we’re going to get, or when!

Long day 250 miles or so, but a good one.   : )