Rolling Down The Rhine
We left Sophie, Chris and Jimmy in Altendorf after a lovely few days of R&R, which included enjoying their company, a day trip to Lucerne, local sightseeing, eating and much washing of clothes.
Back on the road, we headed north towards the outlet of Lake Constance. Our first proper day on the road in Switzerland felt great. My bike even felt like it was going faster. It may have been suffering from depression while in Finland. That or FAD - Finnish Affective Disorder - like SAD, but with more trees. Coming back to Switzerland after more than 20 years feels like meeting up with an old friend. It’s all very familiar and we slotted straight back into it - an easy rhythm of getting up, showering, having breakfast, packing up our campsite, getting on the road (or, more accurately, the cycle path) and joining the dots between bakeries, supermarkets and the next campsite. My most common Google searches have now become “bakeries near me”, “camping sites near me” and “supermarkets near me”.
First stop out of Altendorf was the village of Durnten for a morning coffee and pastry. Turned out to be a cafe attached to an outdoor clothing shop. Which sold some second-hand clothes, too. Of which, Julie bought a nice lined jacket and a cycling shell gilet of the type we’d been looking for over several weeks without success. The day entailed crossing a couple of river valleys with associated climbs. Thankfully, they proved less exerting than at least one of us feared, even if we got to what will almost certainly be the highest elevation of the entire trip at 640m asl (not especially high, but this was a trip based on few climbs). The variety of scenery was a pleasure after the monotony of Finland - towns, small villages, people, farms, crops, livestock. And the mountains - providing a distant relief background of a type we haven’t seen since we left NZ almost three months ago. Of course, as you can only expect in Switzerland, the cycle paths and signage are exemplary.
The first day even included our first passage between two of the ubiquitous crops of Central Europe: maize and sunflowers.
One thing we consistently struggled with in Switzerland was the opening hours of shops and public institutions - Jimmy’s kindergarten has a confusing weekly regime of opening for two hours in the morning or afternoon (not both), we arrived in Zug on a Monday to find it largely closed, yet walking around Altendorf’s neighbouring village of Lachen, it was largely closed on the following day.
We reached the Rhine River at Stein am Rhein - the town right at the outlet of Lake Constance. We remembered it from our last cycle trip down the Rhine for the painted friezes on the walls of the half-timbered buildings in the old town. Having arrived early in the day, we spent a leisurely afternoon wandering amongst the many other tourists, followed by a couple of beers under a parasol of a riverside bar. We went back the following morning after breaking camp on our way out, enjoying the main street without the throngs of tourists.
Our route is on the Eurovelo 15 (also known as Swiss National Route 2 in its upper section) which starts at Andermatt in the high Alps and finishes at the Rhine rivermouth beyond Rotterdam. The section between Stein am Rhein and the Rheinfall, which includes the lovely town of Schaffhausen, is very popular for cycling and we saw many, many bikers en route - mostly on e-bikes.
The Rheinfall itself was a complete zoo - we popped up from a steep final climb to the top to be greeted by tourist hordes. You have to pay to get a good view of the falls - instead, we cycled off and found a lovely nearby village for lunch sitting on the wall of the village drinking fountain (another lovely feature of Switzerland). That afternoon, we camped at Flaach; memorable for being the most expensive campsite we’ve ever stayed at - 53CHF (approx. $110) for us and our little tent.
The section of river between Stein am Rhein and Basel (right on the German border) is quite confined with steep sides and a mix of farmland and forest. I enjoyed the sight on a Saturday morning, of a rowing quad being rowed by a group of masters-age rowers, in glassy conditions, passing a historic village in temperature of around 20-degrees - quite a contrast to the conditions my fellow Avon masters will be facing at this time of year back home…
One of the features of our Rhine journey so far has been the instability of the weather. On a number of days, as temperatures have risen in the afternoons, cloud masses have formed and we’ve experienced some spectacular afternoon or evening thunderstorms and associated downpours. Thankfully, we’ve only been out in heavy rain once so far, but we’ve had a couple of occasions where we’ve arrived at camp and have had to take shelter where we could. Once, we found ourselves sheltering in the doorway of the mens’ showers at a campsite for about 20 minutes, watching lakes form in grassy areas near our tent. Within an hour, you’d hardly know it had rained. The following night, we camped at a very low-key site on a farm. Didn’t have showers, but we pretty much had the limited facilities to ourselves. We’d pitched our tent round the side of a barn to shelter from the very loud generator pump being used to irrigate a field of maize. When the farmer saw us later, he made it clear (in German only) that that area flooded if it rained. Taking his advice, I moved the tent (on the promise that the generator would be switched off at 9:00PM). Good thing I did - we had another spectacular thunderstorm soon after and our previous site did indeed flood.
Our departure from Switzerland was through Basel. There’s actually a point in the river channel just at the northern edge of the city where the borders of Switzerland, Germany and France all meet. While cycling through the city, we saw some swimmers (more floaters, really) breezing along mid-stream towing flotation bags containing their clothes. The border crossing was marked by a now-deserted checkpoint although, for us, it was mostly marked by being back in the Euro zone and standard European electrical plugs. Almost immediately beyond Basel, the river valley opens up to become very broad and flat and our route has been mainly on river levees since then. I’d forgotten how controlled the river is, despite its size (probably actually because of its size). There’s a massive network of levees, river channels, locks, dams, spillways, riverside detention ponds, pumping stations and other infrastructure to minimise flooding and reduce its effects when it does flood. We’re now starting to see large barges moving up and down the river - they’re huge - I watched one pull away from the dock where it had filled with gravel and turn downstream, taking up almost the entire width of the river in doing so. And it then proceeded surprisingly quickly downstream. Feeling the need to entertain myself, I thought I’d see if I could work out how fast it was travelling - it was about a kilometre ahead of me and, putting the hammer down, I got up to about 30km/hr in chasing it along the gravel levee-top track. It took me about 20 minutes, but once I caught up, my cycle computer indicated it was motoring downstream at about 20km/hr.
With both the river and its valley widening out, our scenery has been mostly river, levee-top path, trees and crops. The cycling environment could become boring, but we’re enjoying spinning along with not much to think about. I’m certainly finding it less mindfulness and more relaxingly mind-emptiness. Every so often, we come to a village or town; a good example was Breisau which we cycled into one morning. Having never heard of it, it turned out to be a lovely little town overlooked by an abbey in a commanding position on a riverside hill.
A feature that’s been highlighted from our last Rhine trip over 20 years ago is that the route is quite different. Last time (pre-Eurovelo), we crossed the river multiple times from Germany to France and back again. This time, the Eurovelo route stays strictly within Germany. It’s added to our slightly worrying lack of memory of much of the route - I’ll have to check the photographic record when I get back home...
Our campsites are proving a real mixed bag. Some have been less than average, often mainly as a result of the sheer number of cyclists who are crammed into a small section of the wider campsite, many of which predominantly cater for caravans and camper vans - a new development over the last 20 years. At one site, we arrived early at about 1:30PM, put our tent up and then watched as it progressively became more and more hemmed in by other tents as cyclists continue to arrive until around 7:00PM. And the bicycle permutations were incredible: standard bikes, e-bikes, couples each towing luggage trailers, couples with one towing a wheeled bike for a toddler, a woman towing a baby buggy with a dog inside (sorry, that’s just wrong), although the prize goes to a loaded tandem towing a baby buggy AND with a scooter strapped to it. Having said that, even worse was earlier in the day when we passed a woman scooting on a large-wheeled scooter, towing a luggage trailers along the gravel path of the levee. Does make you think that some of these people must have thought it was a good idea beforehand and maybe less so once underway. Our last couple of campsites have been at the other extreme - two nights ago, we were given (for the first time on this entire trip) a numbered site so had no encroachment by others. Last night, we were at a small municipal site with two tent areas - we chose the one with no other tents and had no-one join us all evening, so had it to ourselves.
We’re noticing that supermarkets are taking their toll on some of the villages, much like we’ve seen in the UK. At one, we arrived hoping to find a bakery for our morning fix, but none were to be found, nor any shops for that matter, bar a hair salon. Sure enough, at the far edge of town, was a big Lidl supermarket. Having said that, we’ve also found some lovely bakeries - just yesterday, we got to a bakery after only about half an hour on the road. Having placed our order, completely unprompted, the waitress pointed us to an electrical socket for our ‘handys’. She’d obviously experienced a good number of touring cyclists desperate to charge their mobile phones.
We’re now entering the middle section of the Rhine, with historic old towns and cities and we’re expecting more tourists and other cyclists. This morning, we arrived at the lovely Speyer - I’d never heard of it, but it was so important in the past that no less that eight Holy Roman Emperors are buried in the cathedral. It was founded by the Romans and is now recognised as one of Germany’s oldest cities.
Tonight, we’ve treated ourselves to a night in a hotel room (after nine consecutive nights of camping). We’re at the ancient city of Worms, probably most famous for the Diet of Worms, in which Martin Luther was declared a heretic. It’s also got what is believed to be the oldest surviving Jewish cemetery in Europe, with the oldest plots being around 1000 years old. I’ve also treated myself to a haircut, three months of increasing shagginess after my last one in NZ.
Tomorrow we’ll be entering the middle Rhine proper, towards Mainz, Koblenz and Koln (Cologne).
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