Whoa, we’re half way there / Whoa oh, livin’ on a prayer

Bon Jovi, 1986

Basel seems unwilling to let us go. There are two ways to leave town on EV6 – north of the river, where you quickly enter Germany, and south of the river, where you stay in Switzerland. After a quick consultation with an EV6 forum (sample group of three responses) we choose south.

The signage is terrible. We end up at a dead end at a ship dockyard and have to backtrack a few kilometres. We give up on the south-of-the-river route, cross the river and easily find the route out of town. (In our defence, we are not the only ones this morning to make this navigational mistake.)

We are quickly out of Basel, out of Switzerland and riding through an industrial area: BASF, Roche, Bayer; they’re all there.

It’s not exciting, but we can easily follow the route, so that’s a huge plus.

Industry gives way to suburbia and then we are in Rheinfelden having a drink and snack at a bakery in the company of a few screaming children and rather underwhelming surroundings. We decide to give the Swiss side another go.

There are many examples of juxtaposition in this world: night and day, good and evil, war and peace. I would like to humbly add: Rheinfelden (D) and Rheinfelden (CH).

As we ride into Rheinfelden on the Swiss side, it is truly like riding into another world. The town is cute, Swiss-like. It has a cobbled town square, fountains, an almost tangible atmosphere of happiness and peace. And there are no screaming kids.

It’ll be the Swiss side of the river for us, at least for the next while.

Mother Switzerland decides to assert herself though and throws  us a few unpleasant and steepish climbs, and then about 10km of rough, bumpy and really rather not nice dirt road. Had I been on my lovely birthday mountain bike Lexie, the ride would have been great fun! On a road bike masquerading as a tourer, less so. I am lucky though. Apparently if you are the type of person who has part of their vital anatomy on the outside rather than all tucked up on the inside, this bumpy ride was even less pleasant.

Unpleasant things pass and we ride onto tarmac and follow lovely sealed bike paths and some less lovely but also sealed busy roads, heading always east. We drop in and out of sight of the beautiful, slightly green-tinged and fast-moving Rhine river.

In the vicinity of the delightfully named Mumpf we tick over what we believe is about the halfway point. We’ve travelled in the roughly 1250km, and we now have Budapest in our sights, a mere 1250km or so into the eastern future. The good thing is that time-wise it looks as if, barring disaster, we’ll make our goal in the timeframe we’d hoped.

The bike route is signposted but it’s easy to lose and that’s what we do some 20km or so from our destination. We continue on along the road. This area is a busy corridor for cars so it’s a little more busy (and therefore hairy) riding on the road and we take refuge on the first possible bike path.

All advice was to cross back to Germany to sleep and eat as it is so much cheaper, so we do. At Koblenz we cross over the Aare river just where it meets the Rhine and then cross the Rhine itself and head up through German suburbia and shopping areas before reaching Tiengen, our home for the night.

We’re staying at a place that advertises itself as a Brauerei (brewery). That should make the end of day beer easy, right?

Wrong! Wrong on so many levels. This place has ceased being a brewery and restaurant long ago and seems to be operating as a self-service hotel, where you need codes sent by email to access your room. 

There is not a drop of beer in sight. It’s a Monday night. Mondays in Germany seem to be a lot like Mondays in France, which in themselves are a lot like Sundays. 

We set out into the small town centre, hopeful the place will not be as quiet as we fear. There is an Italian restaurant! They will have beer and food. That’s all we need. But no. What we also need is a reservation. The place is full. Of course it is. It is likely the only place in town that is open.

Maybe we will have to resort to a kebab? That is way down on the list, lower than pizza, but if that’s all there is …

But wait. Is that a mirage? Are there seats with people sitting in them? But yes! This town also sports a Greek restaurant. We just fall into chairs, order beer and food and recover from our day on the road.

Stats for today:

• Distance: 73.68km
• Climb: 292m
• Average speed: 15.5km/h
• Average temperature: 30C
• Moving time: 4:44:24
• 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 the first place we could find open that would have us: a Greek restaurant in Tiengen. It was a near miss today for the post ride beer!

Along the way today: