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.

Even the excellent buffet breakfast at the Hotel Central didn’t manage to dull the sense that we were going to have to go out in this and cycle 125km.

 

Rain, the Rhine and some cold wet people.

The Eurovelo folks had started the route on top of the dykes along the Rhine which were, compared to the Danube cycleways, the absolute paragon of cycling infrastructure. However, despite being smooth, flat and going in the direction we wanted to go, it was time for some traditional Eurovelo distractions.

We crossed the Rhine and headed 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, in a sane cycle routing world, 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 delay, two coffees appeared and the waiter was so embarrassed he gave them to us for free. We gulped them down and headed back out into the intermittent 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.

I’d done the route to run along the eastern side of the lake. It took us along some outstanding cycling infrastructure. In 40km there was almost no cars, no difficult junctions and the route was stuffed with folks on e-bikes having a much better time on the hills than us.

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, statistically, we would only have to wait 7.5 minutes for a ferry. As it was, we only had to wait 5 minutes for a ferry, so yay for statistics!

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.

Getting through Konstanz to our hotel was an unexpected additional five km through the suburbs which required concentration and real-time Garmin skills. We had been lulled into a false sense of competence by the well signed and safe Eurovelo route up to now.

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 of Gallic proportions despite being in Switzerland. The brutally expensive room itself is really disappointing too. We were pretty unhappy before heading out to dinner. There was a lot of cycle gear dripping wet on various bits of furniture around the room and it didn’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.

The weather was biblical. Along with having wet cycle gear, we now had wet clothes. If only we had a working towel rail. Rather ironically, so far the only hotel we’ve been in with a working towel rail has been the one in Andermatt in which, ironically, we didn’t need to dry anything.

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.

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