TdE - Day 28 Donaueschingen - Umkirch

Route: Donaueschingen - Black Forest - Umkirch
Distance: 74 km
Elevation: 705 m
Duration: 4:32
Weather; cloudy , a little bit of sun, but no rain, 20 C 

Today was probably the day where I climbed the highest mountain I ever climbed with a bicycle. Luckily already Donaueschingen is pretty high, so it wasn’t that crazy amount of climbing too reach over 1,000 meter above sea level. But still, pretty proud of my achievement and the views I was recompensed with:

The climbing started straight away from the hotel and also very quickly the region becomes very sparsely populated. The route today I had planned entirely with Komoot as I hadn’t found any official cycling path crossing the Black Forest at this angle, but while riding I was always at the lookout for cycling signs and if I found one that went into my direction I changed to that option instead of my planned route. 

This also brought my to this straight, maybe 10 km long, gravel path through the forest. Very lonely there…although I did encounter one woman doing Nordic walking.

I took the climb slowly and after a while I found a nice bench and had a pear I had bought about a week ago in Wellheim! It was nicely juicy, exactly what I needed.

Although the temperature has gone down compared to the heat a few days ago, all that climbing still made me quite thirsty, and I quickly finished my first bottle of water. But I have always 2 bottles, plus this time I bought an extra bottle of sweet ice tea as well. But when bottle 1 gets empty a slight panic sets in searching for a source of water. Which in retrospect yesterday was totally unnecessary, but well, that is the benefit of hindsight. I was really quite afraid of not meeting another soul for the entire day and even was quite worried if I would be able to find something to eat. 

When I planned the ride yesterday I checked restaurants  on the route and did find some, but many were closed in the day, or only item on the weekend. But I saw 2 that should have been open. So they were my goal for lunch. I even planned an alternative route and reserved and alternative hotel in Titisee just in case I was not able to find anything to eat, or the weather would turn to the worse. Talking about the weather, the forecast again was much worse than reality. Per the forecast it should have drilled all morning and there was even the distinct possibility of a thunderstorm! Nothing of this came true and specially on the decent I was very relieved that the roads weren’t wet. 

When I emerged from the long forest road there was a very tiny village, but with a production plant for some engineering. Very archetypical of Baden Württemberg! There I found a worker and asked him for a refill of my bottle. 

Not too much later I came to the highest point of my cycling trip (and I guess it will stay the highest point for a long time), 1040 m! And right there at the mountain station of a small T-bar lift I had lunch in the first restaurant that per my search should have been and actually was open!

After lunch the first, not long decent started, and I noticed that descending isn’t that much fun either if it is too steep. I was essentially on the breaks the WHOLE time! Sometimes I looked at the speed on Garmin, and I was kind of going at 20 km/h okay and when it got up to 30 km/h that was really the maximum I could live with. So my admiration of professional cyclists who decent at 80, 90, 100 km/h had grown a lot. And also all the non professional cyclists who would be laughing about my attempts to get down a mountain. It just feels very sketchy to decent on two small wheels a road that is only going down and down. 

This first decent wasn’t too long and so there was a bit more climbing to be done, but quite gentle. And with nice, typical Black Forest farmhouses dotted across the hillside. 

Today and yesterday were also one of the few days were I saw cows grazing outside. Such a normal view in the Netherlands, in Germany it seems that most cows are indoor dwellers and the fields are only used to grow crops. But here in the Black Forest the hillside is too steep and probably the ground not fertile enough, so that there is only grass for cows too munch on:

After this second, shorter ascent the final descend started and my hands are hurting from all the breaking. It was also interesting to feel that once down in the valley that then leads to Freiburg the temperature went up quite remarkably. 

I didn’t stop in Freiburg as I know the city and my hotel is outside. Also I couldn’t really have parked my bike safely in such a big city. 

In the evening I tried to clean a bit the bike from all the dust it has accumulated over the strade bianche of the Danube valley. 

Tomorrow onto country # 5, France! 

Cherry tour around Geldermalsen and then to Utrecht

Bicycle: 87 km 
Riding time:  5:06 h
Total ascent: 138 m
Avg speed:  16.6 km/h
Max speed:  28.1 km/h
Route: Geldermalsen - Culemborg - Leerdam - Geldermalsen - Utrecht
Weather: Sunny, not a single cloud and really warm, 26 C

New all time record for me, 87 km cycling in one day! And actually apart of my buttocks I am feeling pretty fine. Luckily enough they only started hurting in the train back and the last km back home was a pain. The problem seemed to have been the stitches in my cycling shorts. I hope Nivea will do its work.

I met up today in the morning with a group from Meetup at the station in Geldermalsen for a leisurely ride through the Gelderland, a region which seems to be very well known for its fruit fields. Not only cherries as today, but also apples and other fruits, like currants and raspberries.

We pedalled at a perfect (for me) speed through the fields, and after protest of some of the participants stopped at a cherry vending place, where we all bought like half a kg cherries. Mine are already save in my belly. The last I ate in the train back from Utrecht.

The organizer of the ride had thought up a nice route through of about 50 km through a somewhat different Dutch landscape. Less (or maybe even no) polders, much less dairy farming, and a lot of fruit trees.

Close to the cherry spot and actually already quite close to Geldermalsen, we ate in a very nice relaxing garden restaurant on the shores of this river-cum-lake. Food was Dutch. But that can't be helped.

At about km 45 there was an other fruit farm, where they also had many fruit trees and bushes for show and tasting. Like these red currants. A long time I haven't eaten them... probably since picking them last in the garden of my parents many, many years ago. (Not even sure if those bushes are still there... need to check next time I go).

And after about 49 km we were back at the station, where the ride officially ended. However 3 of us thought that it was a great idea to continue just a bit further (well, "just" an other 30 km) to Utrecht. So we left half of the group at the station and rode to Utrecht at pretty much the same leisurely speed, following one of us and his Google Maps. Google Maps brings you (at least in the Netherlands) safely on official bicycle lanes to your destination, BUT it does not necessarily choose the nicest routes. Pretty much the same what Garmin does, when you just give it the destination. I recently downloaded an other app, Komoot, where apparently it is possible to plan a trip following the knooppunt system, which normally runs on much nicer cycling paths. (I am getting totally spoiled here. How am I ever going to be able again to ride in a country like Japan, without a perfect cycling infrastructure???) But no time yet to really look into it. And even if I had, I am still having the problem that my Garmin does not want to connect to my iPhone via bluetooth. Strangely enough it connects perfectly fine to its mobile internet to UPLOAD rides, but not to DOWNLOAD anything. Mysteries of technology (or technological ignorance).

Riding into town we came by this perfect habitat of mussels...

... and this very cute houseboat.

Getting close and closer to Utrecht but not quickly enough for one of the three of us, how had her husband returning today around 18:00 from a business trip, and she still needed to get home. Lucky me ;-) my husband only comes back tonight from his business trip, so I could continue riding at the perfect speed.

At Utrecht station I arrived just perfectly in time for the next train to Leiden. Actually I felt perfectly fine as long as I was on the bicycle and could have easily continued for an other 10 km or so... But Utrecht Centraal it was.

So really a PERFECT DAY. Nice weather (a bit hot, but not too hot), lovely people, great ride, new personnel distance record (the previous one was riding from Bentenjima to Irago in Japan, which however was also coupled with ascent record (for me), good cherries, reasonably nice landscape, and no hills, which I obviously appreciate. 

New 40 km record thanks to getting lost

Bicycle: 45 km 
Riding time: 2:32 h
Total ascent: 67 m
Avg speed: 17.8 km/h
Max speed: 30.2 km/h

Route: Leiden - circle around Brassemermeer and back to Leiden

Weather: Sunny and warm, 20 C

After several days not on my bike today, I finally managed to escape from work early enough to get into the saddle. I decided to do a bit of a longer ride in a direction that I already knew, but this time riding once around the Brassemermeer. I had looked on the knooppunt map and thought that one could ride around pretty close to the shore... This did not count with the fact that one bridge, wasn't a bridge, but probably a small ferry. No idea if it didn't ride any more in the evening, or if simply as I expected a bridge, I hadn't even looked for it. Well, that first error was responsible for the extra km between km 15 and 21. Easily visible on the map below in the big square on  the upper end of the lake. But it was a nice ride, and no hills ;-) I even very briefly made it to North Holland!

At about km 22 I took this picture, of one of the typical (nowadays oversized) Dutch brick churches. Thinking that this would be more or less half the way and now back home.

Well, I didn't count for an other routing error between km's 33 and 38 on the map below. No idea what has happened there, but at a certain point, the road was simply going in the wrong direction. But well, again no hills ;-) Only more km's for my legs. But the weather was really nice. Initially a bit warm, but later on getting fresher. But never even close to cold.

The ride in itself was really nice, with most of the bicycle lanes nicely asphalted, normally far away from major traffic and through, well, nice Dutch landscape riding home in the sunset.

As I didn't stop a lot on route (the first third approximately I already knew), then I wanted to just cycle on and on the return I thought I knew my way... but apparently didn't even managed to achieve a all-time personal record of the fastest 40 km.