Day 7: Freiburg to Donaueschingen

Photos: Us ready for action before the big day of climbing; A giant hairpin, the road here climbed about 200m in the space of a couple of km; A massive hairpin, the road continues up to the right; A photo from the summit, 918m according to the Satnav, the valley we'd climbed out of to the rear of the shot; Us by the start of the river; Luke in the hotel room, efficent no-frills decor. Our first night apart in more than a week tho :(










A brutal day, climbing pretty much the whole way. Started late,
weather was overcast, a nice change from baking heat of the last few days in France.
Again we started off trying to follow the offical german cycle paths but after being sent from pavement to gravel track to bus lane to cul de sac we got pissed off and joined the main road, much to the apparent consternation of a number of car drivers who seem to think it's ridiculous that anyone would want to cycle on a road when there's a perfectly good pAvement next to it.

The road started to steepen after 10 miles as se climbed I to the valley and after 20 we we're blowing, bottom gear ad just grinding out the meters as the road started switching back on itself. Our secret weapon, a box of cliff shot blocks, basically super charged wine gums filled win caffeine, sugar and electolytes cMe in very handy and eventually, after hours of hard slog the road started to flatten off, and unbelievably roll down hill as we got into the top of the valley. A bit disappointing as we hadn't planned on multiple hills but the rest of the route was along sweeping hills in the roof of the german alps, sometimes getting far too quick for our unstable rides (I topped out at 40mph at one point) punctuated by some more sharp ascents.
We reached Donau... at about 4 in the afternoon and went straight to the source of the dAnube (the confluence of two little rivers) for photos. Everywhere to eat wAs closed it being the middle of the afternoon so we sat on a bench inthe rain eating salami and bread which I had a lot of trouble sourcing from a butchers where noone
spoke english and my protestations that I didn't care which of the 13 different kinds of salami they had I just wanted lots of it were only met with crescendo of german coming back at me. Next chance I'll get I'd better get a phrasebook. Luke, who studied german for a whole year at school claims not to speak any at all, much like his french which I noted he avoided using for a whole week in france. And he even had a gcse in that. So much for grammAr school educations.

As it had by that point stArted pissing down we sacked off any more cycling and booked into the cheapest hotel in town. The decor hadn't been changed since the fifties at least (they even had a wireless in the sitting room), but warm showers and comfy beds are alwYs a blessing to the cold and hungry cyclist so we settled in and went out for a few steins to celebrate the first stage of our journey being complete.

A consult over the next stage and we've set upon Budapest on one week as the next target. 700 miles approx so we'll be bumping our average up significantly but as we're now (hopefully) cycling much more on the flat we should start to make good time.

From donau..., Germany
Phil