Day 2: Vaduz to Konstanz
Well this was a long day.
We woke up in the funky Hotel Central to be greeted by the sound of rain pouring down outside. The rain did nothing to enhance the vibe-less feel of Vaduz.
East Kilbride shopping centre but with watch shops rather than vape
stores.
Rain, the Rhine and some cold wet people.
We crossed the Rhine and headed away from it up into the hills through little
Swiss villages. All very cute but really rather tiresome in places.
Nice to see a more traditional side of Switzerland I guess.
Heidi probably lives here.
After a lot of rolling up and down it was time to head back to the Rhine and
the beautiful Rhine side cycleway which, to be honest, we could have just
taken to this point.
Country number three!
The fantastic cycleway crossed the Rhine a number of times and each time we
skipped between Switzerland and Austria without any border checks. Isn’t
the Schengen Zone fantastic?
On the Swiss side we were stopped at a cow crossing. Not what one
expects on a long distance cycle.
Rather sweetly, the farmer brushed away the poo before opening the road.
We had a quick coffee stop in some nameless Austrian or maybe Swiss village.
Although the cafe was open, it appeared that the chef hadn’t turned up
and the waiter didn’t know how to work the coffee machine. After a
frustratingly long wait, two coffees appeared and the waiter was so
embarrassed he gave us them for free. We gulped them down and headed
back out into the showery rain. There was a good tail wind so we made
pretty good time down to Bregenz and Lake Constance (or the Bodensee).
There’s a bit of blue there but the showers kept coming.
We past through Friedrichshaven which is famous for being the home of the
zeppelins so much beloved of the Germans until the folly of using hydrogen as
the lifting agent became so obvious after the Hindenberg disaster.
However, old Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin has a quite lovely and tasteful
monument.
If it were me, I would have made it zeppelin shaped.
Like yesterday, the last 40km were pretty tough. Dr T got a knee problem
and the kilometres went down very slowly. Even an excitingly bijou
little fire station did little to raise our spirits.
Honestly, every village in Germany has its own tiny fire station.
Wonder if they’ve got a pole?
After a long long time we finally got to Meersburg where we were to get the
ferry across the Bodensee to Konstantz. The ferry system is incredibly
efficient and runs every 15 minutes so, on average, we would only have to wait
7.5 minutes for a ferry. And, we only had to wait 5 minutes for a ferry.
Waiting for the ferry.
The ferry journey was short and it was incredibly nice to be sitting down and
moving without turning our legs. We even got a selfie on the ferry.
Rainy and wet but moving without turning our legs. Happiness.
Tired and wet we eventually arrived at the Hotel Constantia which is one of
the most expensive hotels I’ve booked. Unfortunately there was a 30
minute check-in procedure and the towel rail doesn’t work. Given that we
have two sets of things to wash and only two sets of towels, we really needed
the towel rail to work. A rather tetchy conversation with the person on
the desk resulted in a shrug. The room itself isn’t great either.
We were pretty unhappy before heading out to dinner. There’s a lot
of cycle gear dripping wet on various bits of furniture around the room and it
doesn’t look good for a dry start tomorrow.
Konstanz is split in half by the Swiss German border. We went to the
German bit and had cheap pasta and salad at a restaurant notable for the high
density of loud children and the slow speed of service. However, it was
food and we needed food.
Unfortunately the threatened thunderstorms started as we left the restaurant.
This is a proper thunderstorm.
Well…that was hard today. Dr T has a buggered knee, the gears on both
bikes are a bit dodgy, every single bit of clothing we have sits somewhere on
the scale from damp to dripping and we’ve got a wet day tomorrow. This
isn’t a high point.
The Stats:
- Distance: 125km. 10k of that is on a boat but this is a long way.
- Climbing: 540m. This is somewhat surprising given that Garmin told me it would be 340m,
- Average Speed: 20km/h. Not great but however good having cycling infrastructure is, it slows you down at all the junctions.
- Contact points: All good at the moment but Dr T’s knee is a worry.
Comments
Post a Comment