Day Thirty Six: Mulhouse to Montbeliard: (Year 36: 2003)

October 26, 2017

Flash Back to 2003:

When I reached 55 years of age the government gave me the chance to retire. It was a no brainer to take it, since I had lots of other things I wanted to do. However I had really enjoyed my work and all my friends and colleagues at the office. One of them, Dave O'Neil has dug up some photos from the old days for me, like this one:

Steve at his office on the day he retired. The tee shirt does not necessarily mean anything!

Some of those other activities were not as clean or as much fun as maybe I thought!

People came out enthusiastically to organise the pipeline opposition. Steve used his technical training to challenge the thinking behind the project. Many other"ordinary" citizens stood up and challenged the government "experts".

The little protest group now hired a lawyer and appeared before the national energy Board.

The other huge thing from this year - Joshua and Sabrina's wedding!

Joshua married Sabrina Brown in a glorious ceremony by the sea.

Joshua and Sabrina. Besides this cake, they would later cook up three grandchildren for us!

Noel Paul Stuckey wrote the Wedding Song (There I Love) for Peter Yarrow's wedding. It has become his most famous work, and a wedding standard for good reason.

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Fast Forward to 2017, France:

Fun with hotels continued this morning, as we took the time to post as many negative reviews of Le Secret Centre as possible, using TripAdvisor, etc. When we get a chance we will post something on the forum thread about Booking.com, to explain what they did and did not do in the situation.

We then repaired to the breakfast room, for another adventure in hotel management. It was just that the owner/desk clerk? spied me putting two croissants on my plate, at the buffet. He said "Hey, only take one croissant, other people have to eat too, you know. Or at least, just take baguette."

At this point I could have replied that for 11 euros for the buffet he should be able to support a hungry cyclist with two croissants! But in fact I seemed to lose my ability to understand or speak French. In a way it was right, I was basically speechless at this departure from practice at every other hotel buffet on the planet.

But it got us thinking. How much does the stuff we eat at the buffets really cost? Are we bankrupting the poor owners by eating as much as we can for the 11-14 euro price?

So once out in the street we looked in the nearby bakery. A croissant is worth 1 euro and a baguette is about the same. A coffee? Maybe 1.60. But if you add cheese and charcuterie? and yogurt? and juice? and that second or third croissant? At the bakery something with bread, cheese, meat, a drink, and a sweet bun costs about 8 euros. So from our point of view, 11 euros is probably pretty good, but we do have to eat enough in order to beat that bakery price.

Is a bakery like this the key to a cheaper breakfast?

From the bakery we proceeded to the locked black door of Le Secret, behind which our "stolen" 68 euros resides. We childishly considered what graffiti would be best on it, had we remembered to bring our spray can! But anyway, time to move on, and our next stop was old town Mulhouse.

We passed through a little square, where the city was exhorting people to treat the public spaces with respect. They zeroed in on four antisocial behaviours: having your dog poop in the square, peeing in the square yourself, spitting, or disposing of your chewing gum. Interestingly, you could do any of these for the same low price of 68 euros. We could have chosen any one, and gotten more for our money than at Le Secret! (Ok,ok, we'll drop Le Secret).

Mulhouse does actually have a pretty nice, if small, historic centre. We enjoyed looking at the pretty, old buildings and the cathedral, as always. But of course, it's always time to move on.

The cathedral - actually lacks a lot of "necessary" external carvings.

Most mid sized European towns have an electric tram system like this

This is where we rejoined our old friend, the Canal Rhone to Rhine. But now, the thing that had caused us so much fatigue at the end of yesterday returned to being a broad, paved, bicycle super highway.

Trailside beauty today again. We are really enjoying travelling in this season.

More than that, the department had put up explanatory signs at regular intervals, that we found interesting and a welcome break. Here are some of them:

Detail of who has which tail. We only saw one water rat.(Ragondin)

We have noticed a big absence of wild mammals in Western Europe. In this panel they had to fill in with the dog and cat.

The story in brief: A princess lived in a castle with her governess. She had some suitors, but refused them all, until she finally fell for one. He went home to tell his parents about it, while the princess and governess waited by the path for him to return. He didn't, they stuck it out. Eventually they put down roots and became two types of plantain.

When we came upon these horses they were both flaked out. They really looked dead. We watched them for a long time, wondering. But finally the one on the left sat up - so we could leave in good spirits.

The herron (and the Charolais) are common trailside sights.

At one point we arrived at a sign putting us 1280 km from Nantes and 1570 km from Budapest, on Eurovelo 6. So by some definition we were in the middle of nowhere!

The path, though of course fairly level, was indeed climbing. We could see that by the number and spacing of the locks on the canal. At one point, they are almost on top of each other - indicating, we hoped, an approaching summit of some kind. It really didn't matter, because with a warm sunny day going on, only gentle breeze, and paved surface we were just cruising along with no worries.

It did seem like the rest of the population was also out cruising, as there seemed to be a lot of young and old using the path. What's more, the usual canal side fishermen often seemed to have kids with them. I finally asked a cyclist if this was a holiday. He replied, not a holiday but a school vacation - unless you wanted to count Halloween as a holiday. Ok, vacation then. I guess things have been pretty tiring since school started - presumably in September!

Our only worry on the path came when we came to a "Route Barree" on the path. Now we know "Route Barrée" is usually only a suggestion, and since the sign said "in 100 meters" it was worth going to look. In 100 meters we found an excavator loading a dump truck. The truck was in turn periodically traversing the 100 meters, using up the roadway. Oh, simple, no problem. So we carried on. But after 1 km we came to the real route barrée, with a serious fence. Ok, we went around the fence in the grass, and sailed happily onwards. It would be nice if construction crews would consider if they really need to disrupt cyclists, especially on an official pan-European route. But then, it would take away the mystery and suspense of the famous "Route Barrée"!

But no, here is the bigger brother route barree. No matter, we went around it.

What with the two croissant breakfast we were pretty stuffed, but at noon we figured it was time to look for a "plat du jour". We came across a restaurant installed in a boat in the canal, and spun in for a look. At just the same time, a group of fairly local cyclists arrived - all wearing bright yellow, and many on similar Victoria brand tandems. They too were after lunch, and we all enjoyed saying hello and parking our respective bikes. Just as we were about to board the boat, another troupe of cyclists arrived. This time they were mainly teenagers, and all dressed in blue and red, with mountain bikes.

I dove into the boat/restaurant quickly, and before the hoards were ready, and was pleased to find out that though the groups had booked in advance, there was a table for two, for us! Still before the groups boarded, we had a chance to talk to madame, and found (as usual) that she and monsieur had a son in Edmonton. In fact outside later we noticed a Banff sticker on their car.

We found the "plat" just super good. It started with some homemade pate-en-croute, some olives and some tomatoes. Then the main bit was chicken breast chunks, breaded, and then swimming in a wine sauce with mushrooms and carrots. This was accompanied by home made gnocchi, pan fried with onion and garlic. Just super. And desert - was a caramel ice cream with whipped cream and chocolate sauce. We were so happy.

Not so happy was one of the kids, who we observed with amusement. He clearly did not like the set meal that the kids got. Several times one of the adults associated with the group came over to try to get him to eat. Meanwhile the boy beside him repeatedly smelled and poked at the food. But eventually he determined it was good, and he wolfed it down. Then he switched plates with the other boy, and wolfed his down. As parents we could not help thinking that the first boy's family had paid to double feed the second boy.

A quick snap of just some of the yellow garb on display.

But here comes a platoon of red and blue!

The two boys. The one on the left is starting his second plate.

All but two of the restaurant's customers arrived by bike.

At Montbeliard our recent bad hotel experiences melted away as we came to the hotel La Balance. The sweetest girl was behind the counter, and since she was obviously pregnant we enjoyed talking due dates and ultrasound with her. But she also put our bikes in a room with direct access to the elevator. The hotel is in a building from the 16th century on a street of similar buildings. And out room not only has a desk and chair and reasonable wifi but also a bathtub!

We went out for a quick walk in the small old town, and had a look at the city hall, the chateau, the war memorial, and so forth. Dodie especially noticed the children's clothes' store. French kids' clothes are very stylish! She is threatening to go shopping in Paris. But first, of course, we have to get there - so time for a bath and bed.

Our room at La Balance is great - and apparently they have finer ones.

Down the street - a bakery (no kidding!). The green tarte was called a figue, but was puff pastry with cream. The black one was chocolate. We asked about it, and the lady threw one in!

French army brass quartered in our hotel while trying to press into Alsace.

Here is the brass in "our" dining room. Presumably if they booked the place on Booking.com they would have had to put in the request box: "Secure storage, one tank", or somesuch.

Today's ride: 58 km (36 miles)
Total: 1,307 km (812 miles)

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