August 25, 2017
This Is the End, My Friend ...: Day 18 - Sierentz to Colmar with a sidetrip to Mulhouse
This is our last full day in France. We decided to take a little detour north off the EV6 route and check out Colmar and the heart of the Alsace wine region. This would also set us up to head across the Rhine to Freiburg, a city neither Kirsten or I had been to, and pay a visit to the Toute Terrain shop where our bikes were made (all the petrol heads make pilgrimage's to places like Modena and Stuttgart, this is just our version).
We had another deja vu morning though. The St Laurent was very nice, too nice to leave right at the crack of dawn, so we didn't. We lolled around, had a nice breakfast in the garden, I uploaded some pics into this journal, and next thing we know it's 11. And the sun is out. And it's over 30 C. At least we have experience with this.
A straight shot to Colmar would have left us with a short ~65 km day of very nice bike paths. However we decided to make a detour into Mulhouse ... a bit of a back story.
Several days ago my bike started making an intermittent clicking / knocking sound while pedaling. It's got steadily worse over the days and I've narrowed the source down to the pedals. These are about the only piece of rotating kit on our bikes that need any sort of regular (i.e. maybe once a year) bearing maintenance. You guessed it, I didn't do any. We have one sided Shimano XT SPD (mountain bike) clipless pedals, with he other side being flats. The flats are proving to be far too slippery with the sandals I've got so rather than try to refurbish the pedals, I really just want to get a different set. Should be easy ... but it's not, in France.
To shorten this, there's a bike store chain in France that had the kind of pedals I wanted on their website. There was a shop in Basel, about 20 km south, and one in Mulhouse, about 20 km north, the direction we're headed today. We'll just make an excursion there and pick up a set.
Mulhouse turned out to be quite and attractive city, but with no pedals. Oh well, there will be more chances. We kept heading north to Colmar. Once again, the cycling was very nice, bike paths through forests with occasional small towns, and the now ever present heat and humidity.
By the time we got to Colmar, our planned short day turned into a more lengthy 83 km, and it felt a lot longer with the heat. There was a pretty nice campsite on the outskirts of Colmar, and we got ourselves set up and cleaned up, and then went into town to check it out and grab supper.
Colmar is a beautiful city with a very well preserved medieval centre. Unfortunately we were too drained to really appreciate it. We had dinner (traditional Alsatian fare - very heavy on pork - a mistake given the temps), wandered around the town for a bit, and then went back to collapse into bed.
Our plan for tomorrow is to hit another bike shop in Colmar for pedals, then tour through a couple of quaint little wine villages north of Colmar before heading east to Germany.
France, we bid you adieu.
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Song of the day..
Lee by Sporto Kantes
This one's out there .... when I was listening to this last night (came up on a random shuffle) the odd, discordant feel to the song just seemed to fit how I felt about today. Probably kind of fitting that on our last night in France we get another French band for SOTD.
Word of warning, the official video the band released on You Tube you might find a bit disturbing ... watched this for the first time just now ... I like black ironic stuff .... most folks don't!
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Today's ride: 83 km (52 miles)
Total: 1,370 km (851 miles)
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