Day 16

Sleeping location: Dave and Dominique’s house just outside Basel
Distance (km today/total): 130 / 1699
Estimated climb (m today/toal): 300 / 9300
Alice is: 1
Day in three words: Fuck you Alsace

As if yesterday’s 3hr rainstorm wasn’t enough, Alsace today decided to treat us to 31 degree temperatures, high humidity and sunshine punctuated only by the odd thunderstorm, plus an unrelenting headwind all afternoon.  This made the going really tough, especially as we didn’t leave until the hottest part of the day due to my faffing and general phone malaise.  I think it’s safe to say it’s definitely broken now, it kept trying to turn itself on during the night, but couldn’t get past the first screen.  Eventually it got so tired it gave up.

A lot of the way today was along the Rhine/Rhône canal, which was nice except I just wanted to jump in it and couldn’t, anywhere, because it was “dangerous” and “dirty”.  Stupid canal.  

Eventually we made it to Dave and Dominique’s house in Basel and were introduced to their very cute daughter Alice and cat Jamie.  Also present was Ollie, a friend of Dave’s who was also staying there and also cycle touring (what are the chances).  It had been Alice’s 1st birthday party so there was loads of cake left, excellent.  D&D were great hosts and a sleep in their very comfy bed was much appreciated.

More electrical woes - my iPad has somehow changed its passcode and I can’t use it any more.  This required a factory reset using Dave’s computer, but to finalise the restore I needed a code which had to be sent to my broken phone.  So now I have no electrical devices except a Kindle.

Toni left in the night for an early flight back to London.  It’s been good to have her with me on a stretch that might have been pretty tough on my own.  Also glad she wasn’t able to massively beat me up any big hills, because there haven’t been any since she joined me 1050km ago.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 38

Sleeping location: By a babbling brook at 1600m, a few km east of the 7 Rila Lakes Lift, Bulgaria Distance (km today/total): 63 / 3792 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1600 / 31400 The main chunk of the climb up here: 800m in 12km Day in three words: Rila high up* *Pun works best in a Yorkshire accent Firstly, an important update on the egg situation from yesterday. It turned out 6 (SIX) of them had broken, so breakfast was scaled down to bread and cheese as I was in no mood for eggs by now. I broke camp in a leisurely fashion again, perhaps too leisurely as it was 10.30 by the time I finally set off. On the way back to the road I had a really funny incident with a herd of goats/sheep and their shepherd*. He was trying to get them to follow him but when they saw me coming along the track they all froze. He kept whistling and I kept trying to hide but they refused to move for a few minutes. Eventually I decided to move forward in the hope that it would “push” them towards him, b...
Read more

Day 152

Sleeping location: Yogofe Hotel, Kombolcha, Ethiopia Distance (km today/total): 68 / 11064 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1300 / 79800 Restorative cakes eaten: 4 Day in three words: DON’T TRUST DIRT I woke up at 6am needing the toilet, and by this point the cries of the birds and some nearby fishermen made getting back to sleep impossible. We were both very tired and (in my case anyway) a mite hungover. Also, our Ethiopian SIM cards had both been cut off at midnight and we had no internet any more. After getting ourselves together with lots of coffee and some food we set off straight onto the steep rocky track back to the main road, which was a good start to proceedings. After a few km on the main road we turned off to take advantage of a komoot-recommended shortcut which cut out a lot of distance and climb. It was on an “asphalt road”, but was actually on a stony track, but the gradients and surface didn't look too bad so we decided to give it a go. This went ok until 5...
Read more

Day 369 / 134

Date: 16 April 2023 Sleeping location: Sorgvry* House of Guests, Barrydale, South Africa Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 80  / 23137 / 8300 Estimated climb ( m  t oday/total/ tot a l   Part  2):  600  / 2211 00 / 103100 Stress levels: high Day in three words: Big ring day It was another calm, cool, clear day, but forecast to hot up later so we took breakfast (the usual mix of hot things and continental things, but Alex wasn’t the best of chefs: 5/10 with a mark deducted for more minor racism) early and tried to get away quickly. The landscape and riding was fairly similar all day, gently rolling road, big and empty, through big and empty scrubland. There were rocky peaks in the distance and small ones here and there, plus occasional herds of impala/springbok in the distance, one of which ran sort of alongside us for a few hundred metres. With no headwind, major hills or bad road surface some fast riding was both possible and fun so I kept Maggie in ...
Read more