September 6, 2017
Ecluse 34
Leaving the hotel this morning we saw a completely different side of Strasbourg. There was not a tourist in sight. No long lines of people snaking along listening to the pearls of wisdom of their tour guides, no trinkets for sale, no restaurants selling Tarte Flambé. Instead there were trucks supplying everyone ready for the influx in a couple of hours. There were.cyclists everywhere hurrying to work or to school and lots of kids on foot. The cycling in Strasbourg is truely amazing, these are cycle ways everywhere. I always feel a bit sorry for the Kiwis from the deep rural areas of NZ joining the chaos that is Auckland Motorways. We joined the Strasbourg cyclists and that is just what I felt like. They were moving at speed and everyone knew where they were going. We felt we knew how to get on the Marne au Rhin Canal but there were water ways everywhere. After almost 10km the signs were pointing us back into the Centre Ville so we came to a stop. Then along came a trail angel. He stopped he took time, he looked at out GPS track, he gave us simple excellent instructions and told us not to worry about the Route Barre (not that we usually do). We were off over the bridge, around the European Parliament, across the tram lines, over the big bridge, turned left past the swimming pool and onto the track beside the appropriate canal.
We relaxed and just quietly spun along. I was suprised, I have been saying how little traffic we have seen on the canals - this was different. There were lots of pleasure boats moving, we saw a hotel boat and two commercial barges carting sand. The canal is in excellent order and looks alive. Coffee was going to be a problem but even that was solved when we came to a lovely place beside the canal. We had been unable to get a booking at Saverne but instead had one about 3km before it at Hotel Ecluse 34. It is a big hotel with big comfortable rooms but there is nothing else here, we can eat here tonight which is fortunate or we would just have chocolate
For friends and relatives an excellent thing happened this morning. We had an email from Michael, at long last after all the stuffing around of council we have a bulding permit for our new house and they will start bulding next week. Hurrah!!
Today's ride: 49 km (30 miles)
Total: 1,720 km (1,068 miles)
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