Watch out for wobblers – the young and the old!

While it has rained overnight, by the time we get around to leaving Bregenz, the sun is out, the sky is mostly blue, and we join every other cyclist around heading out on what can only be described as a bike superhighway.

There are people on bikes everywhere, including the category of cyclists that I call wobblers. These are tiny little children, I reckon only three years old, with tiny legs and on tiny bikes, going hell for leather with their parents and siblings. What they have in enthusiasm and energy is equalled by their complete lack of road/bike path sense, so it is cyclist beware when there is a wobbler in the vicinity.

We start this morning in Austria, but very soon (and without notice or warning) we are in Germany, and riding through the prettiest little lakeside villages. Agriculture is big here, with many, many apple orchards and strawberry fields. There are strawberries for sale everywhere, in great big punnets that wouldn’t go well in a pannier.

Railway crossings here are interesting. They have automatic gates that come down seemingly ages before a train arrives. On this bicycle superhighway the number of bikes builds up very quickly and once the train passes everybody speeds off into the distance and out of sight. I can’t see this long wait working back in Melbourne: people, cyclists, drivers are way too impatient and somebody would try to get around the barriers.

There are some very nimble cyclists around (with the exception of the wobblers) which make our bike-barges seem very heavy and unwieldy.

At about one third of the way we come across Schloss Montfort, a pretty awesome building that now operates as a restaurant and café. It has a good selection of cakes, so we make a morning tea/early lunch stop here and eat cake. It is a super-busy place, with lots of large groups of older people, and the waiter is flat out. We get cake, but never even get to place our drink orders, so make do with a chocolate-cherry-nut cake.

Overhead an air bus, or Zeppelin is flying most of the day. A little further along we pass through Friedrichsafen, which turns out to the be the home of Zeppelin museum, apparently quite popular with the old folks. (By old folks, I mean older than me folks.) If the wobblers are bad, the old folks are equally, or more so! We have to navigate a bus load of older folks who exit the bus and wander randomly over the road we are travelling on, totally oblivious. I’ve said before that our bike-barges are not nimble!

Our riding destination is Meersburg where we plan to catch a ferry across to Konstanz. Note Konstanz and not Kreuzlingen, which is the Swiss town that blends seamlessly with Konstanz (if you ignore the Zoll stations).

We seem to be back on a bike superhighway again, and make pretty good time to Meersburg. I had expected some desolate port town, but this place is jumping with people, so much that we have to walk our bikes the last way to the ferry. We’d promised ourselves ice cream, but the next ferry runs in seven minutes, so we jump on, without ice cream, and head to Konstanz.

Once again, bikes come from nowhere. We are two of a handful of cyclists when we board, but by the time the ferry departs the bike section on the deck is heaving with bikes. The crossing is short, and once again all the cyclists take off and disappear, leaving us fumbling around with directions. European cyclists are nimble!

Neil has booked a gem of a place for our first rest day. The apartment is large, light-filled, well-appointed, but just has an unfortunate name.

We meet up with a friend/former colleague of Neil’s – Robert – and his wife Madelaine. We met with them three years ago in Stein am Rhein; it’s nice to catch up with them again, and share some other company. We go to an Indian restaurant, over-order entrees and then none of us can finish our main courses, which is is big shame, because I was really wanting to get some legumes into me. Europe is not big on legumes, unfortunately, which makes my eating life a touch challenging.

Tomorrow we rest! We’ve had five days on the road now, and my legs certainly are looking for a break.

Stats for today:

• Distance: 57.8km
• Climb: 246m
• Average speed: 16.7km/h
• Average temperature: 26C
• Moving time: 3:27:05
• 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 our enormous apartment in Konstanz and features a beer I bought from a vending machine as we are a long way from a bar.

Along the way today:

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