Day 2 - Colmar to Strasbourg
Day 2. After a very restful day yesterday and getting into a proper sleeping pattern, things are hurting a bit. Let’s see how this goes today.
The morning
Voila! Le Croissant, le Baguette, le Gugelhupf! Delicious, filling, lots of simple carbs for quick energy with good coffee and orange juice. Excellent way to start the day. Packing up and getting back into it! On y va.
The ride
Let me quote myself from not quite 24h ago…
I guess I will go crazy if I try to cycle the whole trip with an average speed of 15 kph. Into the wind, up the hill, sure. But on flat, no way.
This statement aged about as well as
nobody needs more than 512kB of RAM
just quicker. Perhaps it was the km that were already in my body from yesterday, perhaps it was the sun and just feeling lazy, but today was quite a bit slower than day 1.
Overall, very happy with today’s ride. First of all, cycling infrastructure in France is amazing. Today I cycled almost the complete distance on canals, most of it on the Canal du Rhone au Rhin. There are a lot of locks on the canal, some of them looked like they haven’t seen action in a long time but some had a cute cafe or restaurant in the house next to it and looked quite inviting. The other cool feature was a bridge where the canal crossed another river.
Excellent cycling, largely on tarmac, very peaceful and beautiful. Lots auf water fauna, and now that I am back on EV15, quite a few other travellers as well, several of them on tandems with a hanger full of stuff in the back.
And because it is close to civilisation, protected from traffic, well paved and long, quite a few Mamils as well.
At times, the ride felt incredibly long, but I fixed the main issue from yesterday by regular and smart food intake to keep energy levels high. And, as alluded to above, I did all that with a 15.7kph average and did not go crazy. Amazing.
The evening
Tonight, the resting place is the Maison Rouge in Strasbourg. An Autograph Edition hotel, great service, good food, comfortable room - and despite being literally in the middle of the craziness that is Strasbourg downtown, really quiet. Now some rest, then dinner in one of the Flammkuchen places around town and an early night.