Best sleep we have both had in a while. I always sleep well in hospital. The body is stiff and sore, but ok, and the eyes are stinging. The wind is up today, and blowing stuff around, can't be good. I even had one of Wills' pills this morning.
We lazed about as you do in hospital, and went for breakfast about 9am. It was a good one, with bread, croissants, meats, cheese, juice, coffee and a couple of boiled eggs. Bit of everything. That should do us till dinner, we're only having a short day today.
Finally ready, just waiting for Davo GPS, to calculate.
Packed and ready to go by 11am, yep that is lazy, I know, we had back the way we had come on Davo GPS' instructions. It was all up to him today, as we are having a short day... On Maps.me by car, it is only 41kms, so how much more could the GPS really add on?
Just backing out onto the wrong road to get across to the right road on the left.
Heading out through the industrial areas, and onto a bit of a complicated road heading in three sections, Dave was off at KFC and was late returning to tell us we had taken the wrong road.... Derr mate, we know cause we've had to modify the roadworks barriers so we can manoeuvre back to get on the right one, then 4WD across the medium strip that is desperate for a mow
Huh, off again, on a straight, busy road, a bit unpleasant, but manageable, and not too long before we are directed onto a smaller, straighter road with less traffic. Lovely, lush green forest all around us, one side had huge red signs suggesting great danger in there, stay out! What sort of danger? Animals, hillbillies, armies? No idea, but we weren't checking.
Pumping along, I thought, wow, this is great, I am getting really strong, and then the road turned slightly left, and I realised we had had a tailwind, cause we slowed a fair bit and felt the wind across us. No problem, It wasn't long before we turned with it again. We found a canal path heading in our general direction, which Davo did not want us on, but stuff him, it was nice.
Nice bike path, pity it is the wrong way....
Few kms on, we popped back up on the D8 and turned right towards Roggenhouse. Dave was beeping like a little bitch, but we ignored him and rode through town. The wind was in our faces, that's strange, we stopped on the edge of town, and decided to have a check on the iPad. All in agreement, we're going the wrong way, we turned about and went back to the canal, and kept going over it to turn right back onto the D8. Finally with a big long beep (we were severely told) Davo was happy and shut up.
Nice little one bakery/shop town, excellent sandwiches.
We stopped for a coffee in the very next town, and ended up having "sandwiches " (extremely large baguettes filled with chicken salad, egg and Mayo) as well. We won't need dinner. It was very relaxing and yummy and only 12€. Not far to go, we'd done 30kms, we took off with the wind behind us and the lovely flat road through the farms. Powering along, the sun came out to say hello, briefly, but was hidden behind clouds mostly.
I love these old houses, this one looks like a cake with the icing eaten off the corners.
Every time we checked the GPS, we seemed to still have 16kms to go? How does that happen? I'll tell you. It directs us through little side streets, lanes that mostly (with lots of twists and turns around farms etc) run parallel to highways, and back ways into secret military zones? Hey? Yep, keeping us off the big highway, the GPS put us on some goat track right through the centre of two paddocks of crops, along a dry creek bed, through a road barrier, and when we came out onto the secondary road we wanted to be on, there was a huge sign (big red danger, one) with lots of symbols eluding to military training, with words like "Mort" (does that mean death?) in French. Oops!
Nice and parallel to the highway.
Out of the paddock and into the military area, honest we didn't know, honest!
Phew, after that we put the pedal to the metal, and steamed away from there. Soon we were going through the busy town of Colmar, heading for the hotel we'd booked. It was 5kms from town, and just passed the industrial area. As we got closer, we were stopped for one last check of our whereabouts, and a nice guy asked if we needed help. We said yes please and told him our hotel. He gave us super clear instructions, and after stopping for some shopping at a Lidl market, we found the hotel easily.
Our hotel in the backblocks. Old style, but cheap. Clean and showers hot.
Unfortunately, it was just after 4pm, and the reception of the bar was closed until 5:30pm, and the hotel reception said to go to the bar? Bloody French. We sat on the steps of the hotel reception, logged into their free wifi, and checked over routes for tomorrow, read blogs and chilled out.
Will dealt with grumpy old reception man when he finally arrived around 5pm, and we dragged our crap up two flights of stairs, and we're waiting for the bar to open. It was an easy day to turn 41kms into 58kms, and we're pretty happy.
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