Basel in rain

The man was so wrong. “This is passing by and it will be raining in the Black Forest,” the hotelier said in the morning in Laufenburg when I drew his attention to the threatening black clouds in the sky. His weather forecast stood up to reality about ten kilometers riding with my bike, exactly to Bad Säckingen. There it began to rain and did not stop until the early afternoon. The way to Bad Säckingen, I had heavy headwinds, even squalls, which had torn branches from trees and made garbage bags drifting across the street. At the same time, I even wondered if I was cycling in the right direction: the storm caused waves on the Rhine against the direction of flow. Well, I thought, if now in addition rain comes along, the weather inferno is complete.

Muddy bike

Clean is different

It turned out to be not so bad. The rain replaced the storm, so that I was only wet, but could ride at a decent pace. Around noon I reached the Swiss town of Basel, in the shower mode. My shoes and stockings were now drenched. When I had left behind the town Weil am Rhein, on the German side of the river, it finally stopped raining. At exactly 2.10 p.m. – I was so surprised that I looked at the clock – I actually noticed the first sunrays of the day. Magic? And the wind was blowing in my back. I enjoyed riding along the Rhine through the region Breisgau with a quite constant speed of 20 km/h. Small drawback: The continuous rain had soaked the non-asphalted cycle paths so that my folding bike after a while looked so muddy, as if I had made a cross-country trip.

Sprayed clean

This rain shower fortunately passed me

From time to time the sky darkened, but the showers were all short. And so I was able to make up a bit of the time which I had lost during the rainy morning. If there was not this stupid, rather long-distance detour in Neuenburg – the bike route along the Rhine was blocked because of a construction site – I would have even reached a little further. So I’ll spend the night in Breisach. Again in a “biker’s hotel“. This is not only known by the garage for the guests’ bicycles. Before I placed my folding bike there, a staff member of the hotel connected a hose to the water line and sprayed the bike and my dirty saddle bags clean. If this is not a service! Not only for all sponsors of “School up! River down! “: Today I rode 120 kilometers.

P.S. This time I did not describe my physical condition. Only so much: My calves would give me the finger if they could. Since they can not, they simply hurt.