Day 48: Sutz to Yvonand

September 4, 2013

We started off by taking advantage of the Camping Sutz room with table and power, but the noisy kids from last night also proved to be early risers. About 20-30 of them joined us in the room, causing us, of course, to move out. We had seen this school trip phenomenon last year as well, when crowds of kids made it almost impossible to visit chateaus on the Loire.

It's hard to tell what a ride will be like just by looking at an ordinary map. So while the map for yesterday and today looked basically the same, as a cruise along the lakeshores, in fact the character was quite different. For most of today we found ourselves in open crop land, with lots of corn, rutabagas, onions, carrots, potoatoes, and tomatoes, plus really well pruned and tended apples, pears, and berries.We encountered lots of farm equipment along the narrow roads, and also got to watch it in action in the fields.

The sky was pure blue and the temperature in the low 30s. This is overall great weather, especially for camping, but cycling out in the full sun can be very wilting. Dodie wears sun sleeves because she is allergic to sun on the skin, but even her eyelids can and do get burnt. So this weather is very tiring for her.

Durng the afternoon, Route 5 took us down a broad valley. It was very pretty, with a patchwork of fields of various types. Along the bottom ran a shoulderless country road, with light traffic. Route 5, no doubt to keep us off this plus away from any town that might crop up, took us on small tracks, first up and along one side of the valley, and then the other. When the signs directed us away from the road again, Dodie balked. "I refuse to follow this route any more, I'm getting on that road and taking it to the first station that can get me out of this damn country"

That of course was the sun stroke talking, and in fact something had changed in the country already to make it a lot more pleasant. Switzerland may have Italian, German, and French but it is not multilingual in the sense of signs with more than one language. Rather, there are unilingual, signs, each in its own area. Now we seemed to have crossed an unmarked linguistic barrier, and everyone spoke French. It's not just what language was spoken. Now, people greeted us more along the paths, and car drivers slowed down and pulled over more. And of course, we now could speak with people more effectively. The first was a fellow in a stopped car, who we asked about routing, assuming that we had fired Route 5. What a pleasure to be able to communicate (fairly) fluently, and to understand completely what the man was telling us. Kms later, in Estavayer, this same man materialized on the street and noted happily that we had made it. So he was a friendly guy that we could understand. The country seemed a lot more welcoming again.

One thing we asked our new friend in Estavayer was the location of a bakery, which we then found easily. It had limited selection, but it was late in the day. The good thing was that when the baker lady said our total - 9 francs and 20 centimes, we did not catch what she said. So Dodie asked for a slower repeat. Bemusedly, the lady repeated slowly, enunciating with exaggerated care. The thing was, the attitude was bemused. This lady erased for us the performance of the snarky camping clerk. This then continued with the clerk at tonight's camping, and the waitress at the camp restaurant, even the young man sent to tell us we had put our tent in the wrong place. All were friendly and polite.

German people all over Germany were like this too. We think it's just Swiss German people who are stuck with a poker in the wrong place.

We also made friends with Route 5 again, after finding it lounging by a restaurant near Cudrefin. Route 5 was then the thing that took us into Estavayer. This was an unexpected gem medieval town, with great looking gate and narrow streets. Route 5 actually went right by the bakery, contrary to all its natural instincts for bypassing towns and services.

The plum thing I got at the bakery was very good, called a Jalousie aux Pruneaux. However it now struck me, no more pfannen kuchen! At least, no more until either Sandra or Laurie come up with some, or we come up with airfare back to Germany!

Good, but this is not Germany any more, sniff

MORE OF TODAY'S SIGHTS

Just an interesting house along the way.

A rare bilingual sign. Europeans are delueed about beavers in all languages.

Villages today were nice but not spectacular

Wow, route 5 is weakening. Here we are allowed to see both a grocery and a nice house, atthe same time!

Carrots, carrots, but so deep in the hardened clay soil they were really hard to pilfer.

No three legged horses allowed. Matches the warnings about two legged cows.

These kids, 5 and 6 years old were getting ready for a 40 km cycle to Estravaler.

Look Ken, tractors on a private farm, seemingly.

"Lebensgefahr" is now the more prosaic "Danger de Mort"

Today's ride: 78 km (48 miles)
Total: 3,196 km (1,985 miles)

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