Heading To Germany

We decided not to follow the Tour further south and took a “rest” day in the town where we were staying, Brides les Bains. With our bikes we took a gondola up to the top of the Meribel ski resort. From there we started down and tried to grab as much singletrack as we could. It wasn’t easy but we managed to get a few nice trails to go with the view.

The next day we paid a final visit to the bakery and headed north to Morzine. We had heard good things about the riding at this French ski resort and the scenery on the drive through the Alps certainly looked promising.

Short of time we caught another lift up and on the way lost Kath’s waterbottle. But given we skipped paying for the ride up by feigning even less French than we have it wasn’t such a bad loss. The trails down started well but finished badly on a rutted track ruined by too many downhill heroes on 8” travel bikes.

The next day we had a very pleasant breakfast with Ged in Geneva. The Bains de Paqui are a set of swimming baths jutting out into the lake and they have a great café serving simple, cheap breakfasts with a million dollar view. Heading off we briefly looked at Neufchatel before dropping back into France via some nice scenery in the Gorges de Doubs. We stayed the night at St Hippolyte, a small working class town set on a river.

On our last day before some work meetings in Germany we headed north through the Alsace region of France. A disputed zone between France and Germany for many years the people and towns are a mix of French and German. We stopped off at a few towns and wineries to sample the architecture and fine white wines. Some towns were touristy but others like Bourgheim were delightful. Late the afternoon we crossed into Germany at Strasbourg and took a very slow road to Bobblingen just south of Stuttgart.

The week of meetings was tiring but eased by the brewery in the town, Schonbuch Brua, which produced some nice ales and had a pleasant pub\beer garden attached to the brewery.