Distance: 45 km
Elevation: 437 m
Duration: 2:50 h
Weather: very sunny, but not that hot, 22 C
Today was kind of a rest day, just 45 km in a day and a long test on a bench in front of this church:
The day started late after a breakfast at 9:15 on a small terrace in front of my gîte accommodation. Finally I started shortly after 11:00, probably the latest start of the entire tour. But the plan for today was quite short on purpose, to relax and now I feel ready for over 100 km tomorrow.
After a short time I ended up in the middle of some major road works, but luckily and with the permission of the workers I was able to use their service roads so I didn’t need to find an alternative or mingle with the real traffic.
A little bit later I rejoined a cycle path which was running on old train tracks, which is such a comfortable way of cycling. Even better than canals, because the landscape in general is more varied, i.e. not continuously along a canal.
Shortly before Marmoutier I met an other cyclist and he a restaurant at Marmoutier where he was going to meet his mother for lunch, and yes it was as very nice place for lunch. In that village there was also this originally medieval church, but inside it wasn’t very interesting.
In contrast to the last two days there weren’ta lot of vineyards today, but normal fields and getting closer to the Vosges, and starting to enter them. After Saverne I joined the Marne-Rhein canal which is an engineering achievement with a lot of sluices in order to get up through the Vosges and over to a canal towards the Saar. Today it seems to be only used by pleasure boats, but originally it was built in order to transport building material from the mountains to Strasburg.
Each sluice makes an enormous step as one can see in this “before - after” picture:
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