Two is not quite enough!

One of Ottmarsheim’s main tourist claims to fame is the Abbiatale Saints Pierre et Paul, a 1,000 year old, octagonal-shaped church, which has had its challenges over the course of its lifetime, but has undergone significant restoration. It is quite unlike any church I have seen, and has some sections of original (or maybe early frescoes) still visible.

After a visit to the church, we are done with Ottmarsheim, and set out on our (anticipated) relatively easy ride to Colmar, where we’ll take a two-night break. I had mapped out a route to take us back to the EV15 “official” route, but it turns out that the route has changed, or there is a variation that goes through Colmar, and we just head out of town following signs.

Bike infrastructure in this area is pretty amazing, often with separate paths running alongside roads, at that’s how it is this morning. It’s a Saturday, so there’s plenty of cyclists around, and the weather is great. It is a good day!

Until …

After a regroup, I set off ahead of Neil, but hear him calling me.

“I’ve got a flat.”

Bugger. It’s a nuisance, and is the first flat we have ever had over our 15 years of touring together. We head for a small section of shade, pull out the tools and get ready to fix it.

Bugger! Neil has a probably now outdated, but pretty spiffy bluetooth pump, that connects to an app on his phone which displays tyre pressure. It is something I bought him years ago after googling “What do you buy the cyclist in your life who has everything?” But today it is not working. It does not blow air, which is pretty important in a bike pump. Never fear! We are well-prepared cyclists. We have another pump.

Bugger!! My pump seems to have fallen apart, and while it works after a fashion, it will likely take all all day and a LOT of swearing to get enough air in the tyre.

However the guardian angels have an eye on us, and along comes a lovely Italian cyclist on a very pretty bike, who helps us out with a pump. He is riding from Milan to London, doing more than 100km a day! He is young, fit, and has a lightweight bike. We send him off with many thanks. By the time we get to Colmar, he will have been there, had lunch and ridden on to Strasbourg.

Fixing flats is thirsty work, so we hunt down somewhere for a cool drink. Two villages on we stop at what I describe as an Old Man Pub. It’s a bit grotty, a bit empty, smells like cigarettes, but has cold drinks. I go into the bar and wait for someone to serve me. Two men sit at the bar, throwing occasional glances at me, and conversing over half-empty beers. After an inordinate amount of time one of them gets up and goes behind the bar, then starts speaking to me. I can’t even figure out what language he is speaking. We are in France, but he is not speaking French. Maybe German? He realises I can’t understand him and says, “Do you speak English?”

Drinks drunk, we both make a tactical stop at the pub’s toilet. The toilets in restaurants and bars in Europe can be an adventure in themselves. Neil goes first and describes the trip as, “Go past the bar, turn left, through the door, through the Get Smart hallway, down the stairs and keep going.”

Right. I make my way there, and am sitting minding my own business when the lights go out. No amount of arm waving will make them go on again, but luckily I have my phone with me to shed some light on the situation – and the situation is that there is no toilet paper!

The trip to the toilet might be challenging, but the trip back is often just as treacherous, as you come out a door and there will be several unmarked doors. Often I am just so focused on getting to the toilet that I don’t really pay a lot of attention, so I have a few wrong doors before I make my way back to Neil.

Let’s hope it’s the end of dramas for the day!

And it is. We ride to our middish point, which is a bit of a surprise – the walled city of Neuf-Brisach. This is often a place where people stop on EV15, but because we are going a bit renegade and heading on to Colmar (not on EV15) we hadn’t paid it much attention. But we take a drinks break in the centre of the town and ride out through the town gate, destined for Colmar, still some 20km away.

Corn! This country has endless fields of corn. But nobody eats it. All the corn is destined for pigs. And while we see plenty of corn, we never, ever see pigs. Cows, yes. Sheep, occasionally. Pigs, never. I don’t like to think about it.

Our path to Colmar is flat, paved and takes us through cornfield after cornfield, the occasional field of wheat or spinach, and some rougher gravel through a mysterious forest which is designated a “Zone de Silence” where motorised vehicles are not welcome. That’s fine with me.

Colmar is a ridiculously amazing stunning well-preserved medieval town, with story-book architecture, cobbled streets, half-timbered houses. It dates back to the 9th century, and, accordingly, is full of tourists! We are staying right plum in the centre of old town, thanks to Neil’s efforts at finding accommodation. We have an apartment about three (maybe four) times larger than any European apartment I’ve ever stayed in. This is going to be a great place to kick back, relax, rest the legs and get some laundry done.

It turns out to not be a great place to get food on a Saturday night when you don’t have a reservation. There are lots of touristy Tarte Flambee (a bit like a pizza, but French, and heavy on cream, onions, cheese and yucky lardons) restaurants, but we end up, very late, at a Lebanese restaurant, eating vegetarian mezze and drinking Lebananese wine. It’s good, but not quite what we’d had in mind. If … IF we can find a nice restaurant open on a Sunday, we’ll treat ourselves tomorrow night.

Stats for today:

• Distance: 50.68km
• Climb: 95m
• Average speed: 16.7km/h
• Average temperature: 29C
• Moving time: 3:02:23
• See our ride on Strava

The beer picture

At the end of a day’s ride, our tradition is to enjoy a beer, and to photograph it for posterity. Today’s beer picture was taken at a random pub in Colmar with a random view of a random building.

Along the way today:

Click on an image to scroll through the gallery at full size.