Overall: a diverse and enjoyable tour.

It seems that, despite my flip reflections, I did learn something from the  Swedish trip in 2017. I reduced the distance per day, and took it easier on myself when the going got tough. 64 mile days was much closer to what I originally intended: by the end I didn't feel like I had drained my body of every last ounce of effort, and the last day cruising into Luxembourg was a pure delight (the trip into Tier perhaps less so).

Most importantly, I came to a balance of planning and going with-the-flow that worked much better. Even when I abandoned a tight daily itinerary in Sweden, I had a real obsession with getting to lake Siljan,  cycling myself into a (very pretty) corner in the process. Here, I had the broad markers of getting to Tubingen (and then vaguely back to the North) - but the time to do this, the route I would take, and where I would stop on the way, I left completely loose. Ironically, the much more developed landscape of France and Germany, with services every few miles, gave me more freedom to take risks and go where the tour took me.

This was fortunate, as there were two major issues I just didn't anticipate:

1. The intensity of the heat. After the sweltering summer in the UK I thought the worst of it was over (and actually feared I'd have to deal with late-summer storms). Fortunately a combination of lots of water capacity, willingness to drink from every graveyard tap or campsite bathroom I passed, and sterilising tablets when drinking from rivers meant I avoided dehydration. Astonishingly, I also didn't get sunburnt, which must be a first for me.
2. The mountainous nature of the Black Forest. This was pure bad planning on my account - having a map with contours might've helped here. It wasn't that the route was particularly difficult - it was that I didn't make allowances for the terrain, and ended up cycling over passes completely unnecessarily. It was fun, but it took it out of me.

I did adapt to these in a way that kept the pleasure in the tour, though. On the very hot days, I cut down my mileage and stopped early at promising campsites (I took an extra day to get to the Rhine with the heat and the headwind). I got up early, made distance in the cooler morning, and then took a longer siesta over lunch.

Once the hairiness of the mountain passes in the Black Forest became clear, I started planning my route much more carefully, and as a consequence did a fraction of the climbing I did on that first day. But in the climbing itself I was very happy with my "performance": I was pleasantly surprised as to what my body would adapt to and what terrifying grades I could (very, very slowly) winch myself up.

There's a special satisfaction to adapting in this way, and keeping on touring. This also applies to my (self-inflicted) mechanical problems when I bent my [the bike's] front rim.

Heart

0

Comment

0

Link

Log in to comment or reply

On the one hand, given I'd built up the wheels and the bike, it's nice to see nothing failing under normal riding. On the other, damaging a fairly critical bit of the bike through stupidity alone is pretty galling. When I first ran my hand over the rim and felt it had been deformed, I was convinced that the tour was over: surely riding with a front wheel that might collapse was too dangerous. It soon became clear the situation wasn't as bad as that, and while I probably didn't want to do anything too stressful to it (no hopping between boulders for me, then) it was still very strong and unlikely to deposit me over the handlebars.

One thing was that though I'm pretty happy repairing wheels, without a spare rim (I knew I'd left something behind!) I could hardly fix it. I was by no means keen to try to bend it back (and so risk really damaging it) and my clever idea of removing the rims from both wheels and swapping them over (so the bad rim would be on the back!) was just never going to happen on the road.

In the event, I never even bothered to true the wheel up. I just kept on riding, and checking to make sure the damage wasn't getting worse. In the event, it was - fine. The tour could and did go on. While it was a shame it got bent, the Mavic A319 rims are extremely strong, and it soon became clear that the bulk of the rim was not going to fail. A major benefit of the disc brakes was my braking wasn't affected at the same time. At home I bought an identical replacement rim, unscrewed all the spokes, and just lifted the hub and spokes together into the new rim. 

My happy-go-lucky attitude extended to eating and camping too. I was a bit more concerned about wild camping, but I needn't have been. The French and Germans may spend more time hunting in their forests, but fundamentally nobody spends their time wondering about the woods in the dark looking for campers (other than me, obviously). Camping late, leaving early, not shining lights about at night and not leaving any mess behind, and by the end of the tour I was even happy (or blasé) enough to camp right underneath a cyclepath.

Camping in campsites too proved very straightforward. They were never full or closed, I was never turned away and they were all good value - all of which being very strong possibilities in the UK (and I shall never forget paying 50 euros plus for a single night's camping in Mora). The only place where I plausibly would've needed to book was my first night in Beaune, and there I had a reservation. For someone traveling round the world on a  shoestring, 6-10 euros a night might mount up, but for two weeks in Western Europe doesn't even really enter into my calculations.

Likewise, while my cooking repertoire hardly increased - and I was dismayed not to be able to obtain halloumi to fry up of a morning this time (crowded out by all the indigenous cheese on the supermarket shelves) - eating at restaurants was as cheap and good quality as you might expect from the region. This was definitely a step up from Sweden, where the restaurants were good (and relatively inexpensive) but rather few and far between - and often with odd opening hours to boot. It goes without saying that finding a drink at the end of the day was much easier in this region where great wine and beer traditions meet.

I can't fault my equipment. It continued to function exactly as in the last tour (i.e. my tent and sleeping mat worked flawlessly, and my travel pillow continually deflated). Merino wool T-shirts performed as well in the heat as they did in the relative cool of Scandinavia. Washing my clothes half way through (thanks Ben!) was a big help.

The only instance of the tour where I think things could have gone badly wrong was when I almost came off hitting the roadworks at speed near St. Georgen in the Black Forest. I still wince at thinking of how I fish-tailed when braking so hard. The uncanny stability of the fully-loaded Disc Trucker saved me here - I've actually never fallen off it when touring, and it seems to be more stable when loaded up. Still, I don't want to tempt fate.

One area where I had a certain amount of tunnel-vision was my determination not to "cheat" by jumping on a train for part of the route. I knew it was a long way from Tubingen to Benelux - and I did plan to cut some of the journey off. But I just couldn't make myself do it, and arguably had a couple of very long days in crossing over from the Rhine to Trier. That last day to Trier was probably too long. Ironically, I was actually resigned to take the train that short distance to Schiltach in the Black Forest - but was forced to cycle it when the station never materialized!

Still, for such a short tour, this packed in much more variety than I thought possible in this rather compact and historically intertwined region of Europe. It was very civilized while also giving some surprising tastes of wildness. I have tended to think of visiting France and Germany as "tame" in some way: like the UK, but with better food, public transport and cycle infrastructure (and no tea) - but will have to re-evaluate my idea of how much fun I can have in Western Europe, especially given how easy it is to reach.