Sometimes the short days take the longest time

We are still without a functional pump, and, being Monday, there’s no hope of there being a local bike shop open. I have a bright idea, and look up Decathlon. Decathlon is the Bunnings of sports gear, there is a store in Colmar – and it is open!

We ride a curly, confusing and frustrating route out of the centre of Colmar. I am a huge fan of the Hoddle grid, with its ordered, rectangular layouts. Curly random streets do my head in, and I would welcome a Hoddle redesign on some of these European villages to make getting around easier. But, I guess order would remove the charm of the chaos.

Decathlon comes through, and we are now with a functional pump. And it works! I watched the bikes and planned our next move while Neil shopped, and he not only returned with a pump, but with a can of magic spray that freed up my stiff pedals, allowing me to clip in and out with lightning speed, instead of grinding and complaining. Hurrah for lubricant!

We find our way from Decathlon to a convenient point on today’s route, and get on with it. We have a fairly short route planned (around 35km) but it visits some of the area’s wine villages, which are dotted on them there hills. Today will not be flat.

Our first wine village is Kintzheim, and I’m afraid to say that, cute as it is, Kintzheim is not open for business at the time we visit. There is a wine museum which would be very interesting, with a display of old wine-making equipment, but its hours are 10-12, 3-6. I think the French have so little breakfast they can only manage a couple of hours of work before they have to break for a long lunch, a glass of vin and a nap. There are heaps of people wandering around the town with nothing to see, and not much to do until mid afternoon. The only thing you can do in France at lunch time is eat lunch.

We get on our bikes and get on with it. And getting on with it means our first hill of the day, which is quite a butt-nutter. There are lots of bikes around, heading upward, and people keep dropping off and pushing their bikes up. I make it all the way up with the new magic gears on Joy (though I do reach a point where I ask for another gear and Joy says, “No”), but I do have to take a heart-settling break part way up.

Once at the top there is a refreshing downhill, another up, which is nearly unnoticeable, and then we arrive in another world – Riquewihr. Riquewihr is one of those medieval walled villages that you walk into and say, “Where have we landed?” It doesn’t seem real, even though it is crowded with tourists. There’s medieval half-timber houses, wobbly streets, the lot. Even though it is teeming with tourists, I spy on a side street a couple who’ve put a table out in the middle of their street and are enjoying a peaceful lunch in the sun, accompanied by a glass of wine or two.

We still have work to do, so no lunch or wine tasting for us (yet). There is another, bigger hill to overcome before we can relax. And it’s a big one! Again, I make it up, but again I need a short break part way up to get my heart back into my chest. The downhill is stupendous, but marred by stupidity (not my own!) This is a popular wine route with cyclists and there are obviously a few people out on bikes who are just not really aware, or are oblivious that they are on a road with other traffic. I come across a group of about five cyclists who are headed up the hill I’m coming down, but are stopped, spread right across the road. I totally understand stopping on hills. I am a master of stopping on hills. But these people are taking up the whole road, killing my downhill run as I brake hard to stop. They’re lucky it was me and not an Audi!

We sail downhill through Hunawihr, which is famous for its fortified church. We go past, but stop for a look as we are exiting town. It’s a bit of a postcard view.

On to Ribeauville! Now that the work is done for the day, we stop at a likely looking winery. Bott-Freres, selected randomly, makes a great stop. Our talented, multi-lingual wine tasting host, Nicole, switches seamlessly from French to German, to English and to a local dialect as she serves various wine-tasters simultaneously. She takes us through a pretty extensive tasting of local wines including a fabulous rosé cremant, reisling, gewurtztraminer, pinot gris, pinot noir and even a sweet fruit liquor (Marabella – yellow plum) which I just love!

She and her husband have “retired” and handed the winery over to their son, but she is certainly working hard in the tasting room. She tells us that changes to climate have changed their harvest – from October back to August and that they are having to adjust in other ways. This is the story we have heard from several wine makers over they years in France. Her son has now planted Syrah and Nebbiolo which are not traditional varieties in the Alsace area, but may well end up being the new normal.

Nicole understands cyclists. “I know you are on bikes so you cannot buy.” We still get the full service, and more. She offers to store our bikes while we take a walk around town. She shows us a better route – “flat, no hills” – to get to Sélestat, our stop for the night.

So we buy wine anyway. We will be visiting our friend Jacques in Luxembourg at the end of this trip, so we forward a few bottles to his place to share with him and Laetitia when we get there. We also pick up a few teeny bottles of spirit and fruit liqueur, that weigh nothing and take no space, to enjoy on our travels.

It was a fantastic tasting experience!

We take a quick look at the village of Ribeauville, then follow Nicole’s route to Sélestat. As promised it is flat and we’re glad we took the short cut as it starts to rain just as we pull into our guest house for the evening.

Sélestat is quiet on a Monday night and it is hard to find a place for dinner. We end up at a pub eating burgers (and yes, there was a “vege” burger – though I didn’t trust the menu in this meat-eating area and double checked it really was vegie!)

We have a huge room in our guest house. The one downside is the smell of cabbage! There is a local specialty called choucroute, which is essentially sauerkraut, but you can’t say that because sauerkraut is German and this is a French dish. It consists of potatoes, sauerkraut and “garnish” which means it is piled up with all sorts of meat. Not my thing, though I do love sauerkraut and pretty much any other pickled vegetable. Our guest house offers dinner, which we didn’t accept, and our host has obviously served choucroute to the guests; the smell of cooking cabbage has wafted up to our room.

It was a relatively short ride today, but packed with sights and experiences, so our short day took all day, and it was a wonderful day!

Stats for today:

• Distance: 40.64km
• Climb: 337m
• Average speed: 13.6km/h
• Average temperature: 27C
• Moving time: 2:58:42
• 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 on the doorstep of our room in Sélestat. We dawdled so long in the Alsatian hills that by the time we arrived in Sélestat Neil was hungry/thirsty/both and needed his beer … now!

Along the way today:

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