Ride, ride, ride your bike

Gently down the Rhine!

Due to our unscheduled detour across Switzerland, our previously planned cycle route through the Swiss Jura to Basel and then back into France was thrown out the window. Not a huge issue, the mountains in our way hadn't sounded too appealing anyway. Instead, the most obvious path for us to take was the Rhine. All the way back to Alsace, in north east France. Through Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Germany again. With the obvious advantage that a river flowing to the sea generally goes downhill!

Our first day away from Chris and Anja's saw us joining the network of well signposted Swiss bike routes just round the corner, and following it through vines in the shadows of stunning mountains (yes, including the one we almost scaled the previous day) until we got to the Rhine after 10-15 km. The scale and pace of the river even so far up was very impressive.

The bike path down this part of the Rhine was like a motorway for bikes – complete with grade separated intersections, underpasses and so forth. All very pleasant, and pleasingly downhill too – a blessing since our thigh muscles were on the verge of mutiny after the rigours of climbing 1500 m the previous day.

Crossing over the Rhine via a wonderful wooden bridge, we hit the outskirts of Vaduz, the Lichtenstein capital. Pretty quickly we realised why Anja and Chris had seemed so ambivalent about the country – it really is just like Switzerland, and a fairly boring semi rural part of Switzerland at that. About the only difference was the car numberplates. After stopping to get some shopping (using Swiss Francs) we got back to the Rhine, and continued on down stream expecting to return to Switzerland.

Except we didn't. Instead we found a border crossing and entered into Austria for the next while. And then returned to Switzerland, all without any formalities or fuss. Rather disappointing in some respects.

The next day we spent most of the day on or near the shores of the Bodensee, again crossing without realising from Switzerland to Austria and back again. The only real sign of the change was realising we needed different currency for shopping. Riding along on a dead flat path in blazing sun, looking across a pretty lake to Germany – all in all a pleasant way to spend a day. We had managed to pick a German holiday weekend to ride round the most popular cycle route in Europe however, so traffic was heavy - we got caught in bike jams, and had to wait for opportune moments to pass other cyclists from time to time. Arriving early at our campsite (packed with other bikers too) we had two choices – swim or melt. Taking the obvious option we plunged into the lake, which was beautifully clear and a pleasant temperature despite coming straight from snowmelt.

Over the next few days the weather decided to gradually degrade, reaching a low point as we sat in the rain under a tree near Basel trying to cook dinner, wondering again why we were putting ourselves through this. However, in the intervening period we had stumbled across a truly stunning little town at Stein am Rhein (where we bought some of the yummiest yoghurt you could imagine), swam in the Rhine at Schaffhausen, and seen the awesome power of the Rheinfall (round some inconveniently placed restoration works). I must work harder to remember the good bits at times...

For our last day on the Rhine we tossed a coin and decided to ride on the German bank, from where we admired some of the enormous engineering works put in place to control the Rhine and make it navigable. We had planned to stay in Germany too, but the most convenient campsite was beautifully located on an island in the middle of the river. The office assured us we were in France, but it really felt like no man's land – even more so the next day which had us riding through Alsace where the place names are German, the food is Germanic, and the history has been (at times) German. But anyway, we haven't officially spent a night in Germany – sorry Heide!