Lions!

There are places you don’t need to hang around in and L’Isle-sur-le-Doubs is one of them, though it does have a half-decent boulangerie for breakfast. The town is very busy with cars in the morning rush, but I’m not sure where they are going.

It’s an 80+km day today, so we get away as quickly as possible, hoping to get to Mulhouse before anticipated rain.

We do pass an interesting at least five-way water junction today – a bit of a watery Kew junction for the Melbournites – but the first part of the day into Montbéliard is fairly unremarkable.

Neil has been very keen to visit the Musée de L’Aventure Peugeot since being told about it a few days ago, but he determined it was going to be too hard to get to.

Wrong. When we ride into the town before Montbéliard there’s an information boarding showing local sights, and the museum is only a few kilometres off our path.

So we go.

The museum is about much more than cars. The company really got its start in the early 1800s as a steel foundry that made tools, kitchen equipment (including coffee grinders) and bicycles. So the museum is full of lots of these objects and, of course, lots of cars. It takes a good couple of hours to wander round.

When we leave the museum it is getting close to 3pm and we have more than 50km to go. With an eye on the weather we make haste, but not long after we’ve negotiated our way out of city traffic and back to a safe canal path I feel the back end of my bike drifting only moments before Neil calls to me to pull over.

I have a flat.

Last night Neil put in a supreme effort pumping all our tyres. My rear tyre was a tough customer and today the valve has just blown out. Game over for that tube.

Fortunately for us, the latter part of the day is a ear-blowing-back downhill, with the best bit being a series of downhill locks where there is little need to pedal and I do hit a top speed of 36km/h.

Even downhill is thirsty work, and with unappealing tepid water in our bottles we stop for a double-orangina. The guy is not in the least perturbed when I ask for quatre orangina but only deux verres.

We roll into Mulhouse quite late and just beat the rain, which starts while we’re cleaning up before hitting the town. We are back in Alsace which is where we started our journey in France (only just a bit north of here). After a disappointing – but still refreshing – end-of-day beer we find a lively restaurant where we can sit inside out of the rain and eat local food like flammekuchen (a bit like a thin crust pizza) and roesti (but given a modern twist to be served as the ‘bread’ for a burger). And yes, the names of things are becoming very Germanic. We are just a sparrow’s spit from both Germany and Switzerland.

Stats for today:

• Distance: 82.7km
• Climb: 79m
• Average speed: 18.3km/h
• Average temperature: 26C
• Moving time: 4:31:32
• 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 pub in Mulhouse while we sheltered from the rain just after arriving in Mulhouse. It was a mistake beer – a Leffe Ruby. While it looked pretty it was one of those sweet fruity beers. Enough said.

Along the way today: