Day 6: Strasbourg to Speyer

Today was going to be a long day but I’d cut the route down by 15km and it was probably in the “achievable” range.

The hotel in Strasbourg was outstanding. If you’re ever there, the Cour de Courbeau is the place to be. The breakfast was delicious and the hotel is achingly cute and lovely.

We left early to take advantage of what looked like it was going to be a good day.

7am.  There would be less smiles 135km from here.

Now is the time to have a little homage to the cycling infrastructure in this part of the world. We cycled out through Strasbourg and its suburbs and it was 15km before we hit a point where we cycled on the same road as cars and lorries. EV15 has really got into its stride now. Cycle paths are everywhere and every single junction is signed and I’m pretty confident we could have done the whole thing without a Garmin route.

Most of today’s route was on tarmac paths on the top of Rhine flood dykes. We had a tail wind, the weather was good — modulo a couple of light showers — and it was pan flat.

Endless lovely cycle paths.

The route occasionally wound its way through quaint little French villages with Germanic names.

There was a lot of this sort of stuff.

Although this part of the Rhine isn’t the fully industrialised version which we will be seeing a few hundred kilometres north of here, it appears to be the very epicentre of gravel production in France and Germany. We passed countless gravel works presumably sucking up the bottom of the Rhine and then grading it into everything from sand to quite large pebbles and then selling it to the sorts of people who need sand and quite large pebbles.  If you ever need gravel, you know where to come.

Get your luuuverly gravel here…

The tail wind sped us along and after an abortive coffee stop at 33km, we decided to keep going and enjoy the gravel works fun.

No pretending to be sick here.

At some point we ended up in Lauterbourgh which is, I think, the most easterly point in France. Since we were about to leave France for the last time, we stopped at a tiny bakery to have coffee and maybe the best cheese and ham baguette I have eaten in my entire life. I should know the answer to this question since I own a bakery but what is it about French bread which is so so so good?

We left France for the last time and continued on the outstandingly easy EV15 route.

Imagine all of today was like this.

These sorts of paths just went on and on and on.

For those of you who are missing your salt based political commentary, I recommend this episode of Revisionist History which, if you are ok with Malcolm Gladwell being…er…Malcolm Gladwell is pretty good on the whole goitre, iodised salt thing. I completely realise that this is not going to be everybody’s cup of tea.

Dr T was very taken with this sign.

Who isn’t going to stop and take a picture of this?

We saw barges on the Rhine for the first time and raced one of them — carrying gravel no less — for about 10km.

Gaining on the gravel barge!

The last 30km were…tough. This seems to be something independent of the total distance.  If you’re cycling 60km, the last 30km are tough.  If you’re cycling 200km, the last 30km are tough.

It had been a good day but grinding out the last 30k is just challenging.

Both of us looked a little like this after 125km

We rolled into Speyer pretty tired but it this was a good day. Fantastic cycling infrastructure, enough scenery to keep us interested, a fascinating array of gravel works and some outstanding French bread.

Speyer has a fascinating history. It’s a UNESCO world heritage site and has been continuously inhabited for over 2,000 years. Given it’s built on a hill, it was one of the few places along the Rhine which didn’t suffer catastrophic floods and therefore the Roman’s used it as one of their sites for a fort.

The Cathedral is very impressive. Begun in 1030 and consecrated in 1060 it’s the largest remaining Romanesque church in the world and one of the most important architectural monuments of its type.

This doesn’t really do it justice to be honest.

In 1529, the Diet of Speyer gave us the word “Protestant” and therefore was partly responsible for kicking off a good 400 years of sectarian Christian wars resulting in millions of deaths.

They also have a huge town gate.

To be honest, it’s pretty easy to go round the gate.

It’s one of Germany’s oldest cities and although there is the usual dispiriting parade of chain stores along the Main Street, it’s pretty. Very much helped by it being a beautiful evening. The sun was out, the tourists and locals were all getting their food into their face holes at 6pm since late nights aren’t really a thing here.

Before we had gone out to dinner, I snuck out to the Technik Museum Speyer. Long time readers of this blog will be well aware of my obsession with weird and unusual museums which one comes across on trips like this. Who can forget the Electrical Museum of Budapest or the Croissant Museum in Poznań?

The Technik Museum in Speyer is glorious. If you’re ever in Western Europe within 500km of Speyer, I really recommend a visit. It’s a hot steaming mess of random curation which is at once both charming and mind boggling. Here are some pictures to whet your appetite. For those of you who don’t like mad museums, skip to the end now.

It’s an F15 fighter and a Lufthansa 747 on a stick!

Three beautifully restored classic European, British and American sports cars…and a giant diesel engine and a motorcycle.  Fabulous curation.

A “Hind” Russian attack helicopter.  On a stick.

An AN22 on a stick. This is a giant aircraft.

It is very big inside.

They’ve got a Russian “Buran”. The Soviet version of the space shuttle.

This is the wiring loom of the Buran. You’d have to be a pretty brave cosmonaut to fly in this.

Next to the spaceships there’s 250 motorbikes! This is a mess.

Some dried space food. In a case.

It’s charming and wild but it really needs a curator.

Amidst all the examples of crazy German engineering over the past 200 years, it was nice to see the high point of British engineering rusting away in a back lot.

Ok, it isn’t a Russian space shuttle or an F15 but we should be proud.

I’ll spare you the other 60 odd photos I took. I know I’m boring the pants off everybody. However, if you like this sort of thing, it’s a great museum in a quirky way and well worth a visit.

We ate “Greek themed” German food in a restaurant run by Croatians in front of the oldest and largest Romanesque Church in the world. The European dream still lives.

Two tired people in front of a stunning church eating gyros.

Tomorrow we’re going to Mainz. It’s just over 100km and I think with our current “two stop” strategy, this is going to be easy. The EV15 is beautiful, there’s no gradient to speak of and, finally, the weather seems to be smiling on us. There have been some tough days so far but I am hoping that we’re through that.

Stats:

• Distance: 134km. This is a long way but the tail wind made it easier.
• Climbing: 277m. From here on in, I’m not going to mention the climbing because it’s basically flat from here to Holland.
• Average Speed: 21.1km. Weirdly, all the lovely cycling infrastructure slows you down because you have the junctions to negotiate.
• Contact points etc. The knees seem to be holding up. Liberal prophylactic use of SudoCrem™ might be doing the trick.

Previous

Next