Muhlbach to Husseren-le-Chateaux via Colmar

June 30, 2024

And a Visit to the Unterlinden Museum

Today we had to make up the day’s plan on the fly, along with the emotional backdrop of knowing we were not going to do a signature day- climbing some cool mountains in the Vosges and doing my favorite thing: touring historical war sites in obscure places. We also recently learned that a close relative has had a serious medical issue and that has weighed us down. So, we were feeling a bit blue.

We are due in Colmar the day after tomorrow so we could pretty much stay anywhere near Colmar, and given the abundant “lovely, atmospheric, and quaint” towns nearby (synonyms to “lovely” and “charming” compliments of Steve Miller of Grampies’ fame) we had a lot of choices. This last minute stuff is where the internet is so handy: I found a very nice resort in Husseren-le-Chateaux, just outside of Eguisheim but further up the hill, for a last minute reservation, so we booked that first thing. The awkward thing is that it was raining pretty steadily so we wallowed around a bit that morning in our hilarious studio tub until we had to check out, and rode our bikes up the hill to the pizza place - which also doubled as the the local bakery. We arrived around 11:30 to learn the bakery closes at noon and of course the French don’t mess around with closing issues. After the bakery lady served us she locked the door at 11:35 am —no need for any pesky cyclists to delay closing time on a Sunday! We enjoyed our café and croissant - what was left on offer - and felt we couldn’t linger so we got on the road shortly before noon. We had a hole in our schedule because we couldn’t check in before 3 pm so we decided to ride into Colmar and visit the Unterlinden Museum before riding the 10 km to Husseren- les-Chateaux.

This shows how wonderful the French riding infrastructure can be even in remote, rural areas such as this.

And the route had stairs/ramp which was an underpass that needed to be negotiated just outside of Colmar.

The ride into Colmar was largely back-tracking a good part of the ride we did yesterday, but now we are riding east. The good news: it was mostly downhill and although it did rain for about half the ride, it was not too hard or annoying. The ride from the outskirts of Colmar into town was trickier than expected due to harder rainfall and some traffic. We were pretty wet by the time we arrived at the Unterlinden.

The Unterlinden is Colmar’s signature museum. It has a variety of exhibits -some local prehistory findings and some modern stuff- but its claim to fame is its 15th century altar pieces and particularly the Isenheimer altar piece. I understand that this sort of sounds like a snore when I say it, but honestly it was fascinating and worthy and if we had only gone for half an hour to see that one exhibit it would have been worth it!

We arrived at the museum and there was no bike parking so we parked our bikes under an overhang across the street to keep them out of rain, locked them and grabbed our daypacks to go into the museum. We have never had any problem with theft by leaving our panniers and bikes, but I always worry a little. I know many cycling tourists think we’re crazy to leave our bikes and gear this way.

When we got to the Museum we found out there were lockers so we took the opportunity to take off our outer layers, which were pretty wet, and stored them and our packs in the lockers.

The museum, lodged in a 13th century cloister, has a large exhibit of 15th century Germanic art and as part of that is an exhibit of alterpieces. The purpose of these altar pieces was to educate the church-going masses with a series of pictures telling religious stories. The masterpiece of the collection is the Isenheimer altarpiece, by Grunewald, painted in 1515, the purpose of which was to entertain people in a local hospital who suffered from medieval skin diseases. It was worthy and powerful and the audioguide did a good job of providing context.

Altar pieces can be somewhat boring when presented out of context, but the museum displayed their collection beautifully.

As we were leaving- which meant getting redressed in the locker room for the ride out to Husseren-le-Chateaux - we ran into a couple, Liz and Dave. Liz was from Oregon so of course we stopped to chat. They both had interesting jobs in DC and were out in France for a conference. Dave was lugging around a Rick Steves France book, so we laughed about that, since Rick Steves is my favorite travel writer. We go out in DC to visit our son and his family so we may look them up the next time we're there.

We left Colmar in a minor drizzle thinking we just had a 9 km ride out to Husseren and had an unexpected adventure. Because we had put these plans together on the fly, I had neglected to do a Komoot route and we realized while having a coffee at the Museum that we needed to plot our route. In the absence of Wi-Fi, Komoot doesn’t work well on cell coverage, so Dave just google mapped the ride on the “bike setting.”

Well, lesson learned in that regard. The first 6 km we’re fine…. and then we hit the vineyards which were situated on very steep slopes. Google directed us through all these steeply uphill single track trails. It was like the day with Eric and Melinda in the forest outside Loches except even more challenging. We wound up pushing and yes, thanks to a reminder from Steve Miller (the Cycleblazer, not the musician 😎), I used my bike's walk assist feature. This experience was a good lesson that Google maps bike routes can include mountain bike trails in its analysis. It took us an extra half hour of maneuvering and huffing and puffing to go those 2 km.

The Three Chateaux looming on the hilltop.

Half way up on our ride to the hotel, working our way through the vineyards and looking down on the town of Eguisheim.

This shot doesn't quite do justice to the steepness of this pitch.

Suddenly our 4* Hôtel appeared on the hill, thankfully, and it proved to be a wonderful small resort. We decided instantly, as we settled down in the little lobby bar to catch the last 18 km of the Tour, that we wanted to stay a second night. The restaurant was full that evening but fortunately the bar served snacks. Since it was France, “snacks” means a tarte l’onignon, gazpacho and charcuterie, so we managed quite well in the end.

Today's ride: 35 km (22 miles)
Total: 2,167 km (1,346 miles)

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Steve Miller/GrampiesThanks for the multiple shoutouts. All the routing algorhythms seem to have a preference for muddy goat tracks at some point. The developers often seem to believe that there is only one kind of cyclist, and that person is a mountain biker.
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