Descendre pour mieux monter

Today was a day of literal and figurative ups and downs. But I must say that as my equanimity increases over the course of this vacation, I have been able to cope with the figurative downs better and better, while the literal downs are, of course, a lot of fun.

After a wonderfully refreshing and restorative night’s sleep, we awoke to a bright, brisk mountain morning and set off down the Fecht River valley from Munster at about 9 am. This part of the ride was really lovely, mostly on a well-maintained bike path. Since it was pretty much downhill, we made great time and were already in the vicinity of Colmar 45 minutes later. We made a slight detour to the little town of Logelbach, where a health food store sold that rarest of commodities in France: peanut butter with no additives. (On our first trip to France in the early 90s, peanut butter of any variety was unheard of, but now you can find it in most grocery stores; alas it all has added salt, sugar, and palm oil (or worse.))

Then we doubled back to Wintzenheim, where we had a mid-morning snack in the town square before rejoining the EV5. For some reason, the signage in the upper Rhine part of Alsace doesn’t seem to be as good as the lower Rhine. We missed a number of signs (or perhaps they simply weren’t there) and had to double back or make our own way back to the path using our GPS apps.

In any case, we were solidly back in the Vosges foothills and wine country, with its attendent hills to huff up and soar down. Some of these were quite long, but now that we have our climbing legs, we were able to tackle them if not easily, then at least pretty successfully. And the views they offered were unfailingly spectacular.

We walked our bikes through Eguisheim (the birthplace of Pope Leo XI... or maybe IX, I can’t recall), with its concentric streets and pretty central square. Then, just past Rouffach, I got a flat tire. I’m still not sure how it happened, but after checking our bearings, I noticed that my front tire was soft. I guess in 9 weeks of cycling, at least 1 flat tire is to be expected, and at least it was the front tire, which is a bit less of a hassle to change. In any case, we were due for a rest and some lunch, so we stopped at a bus shelter, where Sonia made sandwiches and I changed my inner tube. To be honest, the dry run I had changing Sonia’s a few weeks back proved to be good practice, and I managed to get back in rolling order within about a half-hour.

 Eguisheim

But when we saw a little roadside cafe about a kilometre after setting off again, we thought we deserved to sit down at a proper table in the shade and have a piece of pie.

The final stretch of the day was about 12 kilometres to the town of Guebviller and our hotel for the evening. We picnicked again for dinner and as I write this, a blues band is playing in the hotel  bar, but it’s an upbeat sort of blues, so there’s no need to cry.