Day 17: Chatenois to Guebwiller

April 12, 2018

Looking out our window this morning it really did seem like we were in Alsace. That's to be expected, because of course that's where we were. But you can also look out a window and just see a generic back alley, no matter where you are. This time it turned out that not only our front window but the whole surroundings are seriously Alsace. Just around the corner we found a city wall and gate, a tower with fancy roof, a church with golden statues, and a medieval garden.

The story of the garden. Unfortunately the text is not really legible, but they are showing the plants grown for dye colours.

The garden - not much happening here yet

Looking at the map we had hopes that with an even greater density of villages coming up we would find lots more of the beautiful old towns we had seen yesterday, joined by narrow laneways through the vines.

One of the first towns we came to, Orschwiller, certainly was a good candidate. It had a sign at the beginning of town saying that it had been voted most beautiful village in Alsace for 2016. Based on that we set off up into the town centre. By "up" I mean "UP". When we got there what we found was Ok (see photo) but not really pinup quality.

This slight disappointment kind of set the pattern for the day. The next thing that happened was that the route took us about 2 km into the Rhine plain, so that we could see villages at the foot of the hills but we did not seem to be going through them. I had earlier written that the veloroute was going to "sensibly" stay out of the hills, but now I was down on the flats crying about it. Go figure.

Hey, why are we stuck down here and the village is up there?

One of the advantages of being on the flats was the instead of acres of grape vines we could look at the culture of various other fruits. There were blueberries, apples, and currants all carefully pruned, of course, and a joy to look at.

As we came closer to Colmar, it seems, the situation deteriorated. Now we were mostly threading our way through the "suburbs" of the presumably cute towns, and it would take a special diversion to go find the picturesque bits. These suburbs were by no means ugly, but they were just groups of solid, well maintained residences. That is basically a desert for a cyclist. Also the signage, while still pretty good, had developed some annoying failings - like not being there or pointing the wrong way. Even with the GPS this had us scouting around a fair bit, and without the GPS there would have been several occasions of being totally lost.

Typical mid-morning view. The vines are still there, but we are ..where??

We had developed the ambition of trying some typical local food other than in a bakery, which put us on the lookout for a restaurant with a lunch special - a plat du jour. We chose Hattstatt for our try at this. Hattstatt was relatively on the flat, and surrounded by "suburbs". The old town comprised two streets that ran from a church at one end to a gate at the other. The streets were really nice, even if the bulk of the town was plain. We studied some chalk boards, rejecting one for having a base price of 18 euros and another for having servings that looked too skimpy, after observing the other patrons' plates. The one we settled on had the base plat at 10 euros, plus 2 for appetizer and 2 more for dessert, totaling then 14. Here is what we got:

The "pate en croute" appetiser gave some pause as I thought of everything the French could decide to put in a thing like that. But it was good. The pork chop and polenta was also a winner as was the unique creme brulee, with a hard caramelized crust and soft creme beneath. I also really liked the salad dressing, rich in Dijon mustard.

After Hattstatt we went through a lot more "suburban" path finding. Together with a head wind, it made us quite tired. But the ride had one more thing queued up for us. It took us high up into a sea of vines. More than in other areas, the land was covered in grapes, a carpet that covered high hills entirely. For the record, this is in the vicinity of Pfaffenheim, Soultzmatt, and Westhalten.

At this stage we could have been saying "Wow, grapes!", but we were both tired in general and a little peeved dealing with the signage. So we more or less silently just persevered and made it into Guebwiller. This is where we had found a B&B, Chez Pascal et Mireille. As if often the case with a B&B, the room is much bigger and better than in a standard French hotel, and in this case the room rate was less. So I am typing this on a properly sized oak table, so much better than on your lap or the bed!

Tomorrow we will stop over at Jean Paul and Chantal Riff. These two are really serious cycle tourers that we ran into two years ago somewhere on EV 6. Jean Paul and Chantal have cycled 70,000 km in the last 10 years, using two wheeled recumbents. You can see their Cycleblaze profile by clicking here. We are excited to meet up with them again, though right now we have little idea of how to safely reach their home town of Bisel, which is actually still in Alsace but not on the wine route.

Today's ride: 71 km (44 miles)
Total: 952 km (591 miles)

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