Dialled In Some Weird

24/05/15 Sarreguemines-France to Merzig-Germany, 67kms

Another day, it is Sunday, and everything is quiet. This we are becoming used to. We ate our French breakfast, and packed our things, dragged them down the four flights of stairs, and loaded the machines. 

The quiet streets of Sarreguemines on Sunday.

It was about 10:30am, some people were starting to come out. First stop, the patisserie, for morning tea, then Subway for our lunch. Nothing will be open today, and we'll be riding along the Saar river for the day, best to be prepared. Finally just before 11am we get on the river trail, and take a nice easy warm up. The old knees are feeling a little stiff.

Get that Coke Life into ya, it is the new favourite.

Overcast, good temp, light breeze, and no cars. A few boats, a couple of locks, and we're cruising. Nice. After about 10kms, the bicycle traffic is increasing, the skaters are coming out, and so are the walkers. We are putting on our big Aussie smiles and saying hello to as many as we can. It's fun to see the reactions.

A big hello, and these two were confused! But smiled back.

We stopped to check out one of the riverside sign boards, it had a map and pictures of the fauna and flora, and a cyclist stopped for (what I thought was) a quick chat. 15 minutes later, we all head off towards Saarbrucken. A whole bunch of riders passed us as we started off again, but we had to pass them all, as we were actually going quicker, cool. About 5 more kilometres along, we caught our Mr Have-a-chat, and continued riding alongside him, chatting. He was from Saarbrucken, and asked if we wanted to try Duck Beer! Well, that sounds a bit dodgy, what part of the duck is the beer made of, I was wondering?

Racing for some Duck Beer....yeah ok!

So we pull into a riverside Bar and restaurant. And yes, we had Duck beer. Not actually made from ducks, thank god, just called Duck beer for fun. Ok? There was a large "herd" (I know they're a flock, but they were behaving like cows) of geese, taking over the pathway, and Mr Have-a-chat, kept calling them ducks. His name was actually Gart, and he seemed like a nice man, if a little different. He is working in the Geman Telecommunications, with only a couple of years until retirement. He is going on a five day cycle tour around Lake Constance (The Bodensee) in two weeks time, with a friend.

Cheers Gart, thanks for another great experience on our adventure.

The ducks waiting to be made into beer. Bloody huge geese!

We joyfully wasted an hour or so, talking with Gart, and having a couple of large duck beers, before we all thought we'd better continue or we may need a taxi. Gart was going in our direction for a couple more kms, and gee I'm glad we didn't have anymore beer. The cycle traffic was getting pretty thick, and Gart was all over the path. I was hanging way back, I didn't want to get into any situations. Gart would ride alongside Will, and when on coming traffic came, he would just stay there. All the cyclists going past would speak sternly in German, and Gart would just keep riding and talking. I was laughing so much, at the back. Some poor people had to take evasive action. He finally bid us farewell, and veered off to the left. Phew! Weird.

Will coming out, he was pleasantly surprised. They were very clean inside.

Shortly after that we found a toilet and then a bench, to have some lunch. We'd missed morning tea, so we ate that too. While we were doing that, a jogger passed us, we'd passed him before. Man he'd come a long way. We'd ridden 20kms, so far, and we saw him way back. While eating one of our subway sandwiches, we had the sounds of a midday rave party going off somewhere. Doof doof, doof, doof! That should get us moving. Weird.

We saw lots of these big birds along the canals, but they always flew away.

Following the Saar river all day. Very nice, and relaxing.

Jumping back on the trusty steeds, we got moving again to about 22km/hr. Sunday traffic on the path was still increasing, with more and more cyclists. We're in Germany, weird, we started the day in France. It seems like a very industrial region, with lots of factories, some mine shafts, and a massive dilapidated factory of some sort. 

This is part of some enormous old factory. We rode under it, through it and around it.

Still giving everyone the big smile, and we were getting quite a few Weird looks today. People had that look of surprise, when you didn't expect to see something like us here. It was funny today. We only had about ten kilometres to go and the path veered away from the river, out to a park with benches, so we took the opportunity to have a break and eat the other subway sandwich. Still good, and I probably can go without dinner, which just might be necessary.

Still on the river path.

On we go, and we were passing everyone. This is a nice change. We must be getting stronger. We managed to find our way to the only camp ground I could find yesterday on the internet, called Kanu-Camping Club. It is a canoe club, that allows camping. For 12€, we have a spot out the side, on mole hill (it is full of diggings and what look like mole hills and holes we keep falling in) but the showers are included (no dunny paper) and are good and hot. 

I hope I don't fall in one of these holes in the night....

I asked the caretaker lady if any shops were open close by and she looked at me like I was an idiot, shook her head and said tomorrow. When I told Will, he got that super determined look he gets, got on the Maps.me and then took off on his unloaded bike. Thankfully, he returned about 20minutes later with a couple of cold beers and a couple of Voppers (whoppers to us Aussies). He is now happily tapping out notes for his blog drinking beer.

Tomorrow, hopefully we will get to Luxembourg City. Wow, how cool.