BRC to Schwäbisch Gmünd - the alternate route
After chatting with Dominic earlier in the year, and after a few beers, I decided that it would be great fun to take part in the BRC to Schwäbisch Gmünd ride in July and it would be a fantastic opportunity for one of my boys, Miles, to come along for the adventure.
Some planning later, we decided that since we live in London that we would take an alternative route to Germany by going south to Dover, catching a ferry to Calais and meeting the boys at some point along the route. I'd wanted to cycle the Rhine valley, as I have many fond memories of holidaying there as a child, but Komoot told us otherwise and that we should skirt the borders of France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany and meet up in Heidelberg for the final push to Schwäbisch.
The planning involved breaking up the journey into sizable chunks and we would therefore set off one day prior to the Barnsley depart. So, on the 18th of July, Miles and I set off from the house, with little fanfare, for a relatively known cycle down towards Dover. One puncture and a pannier rack coming loose were our only technical problems, easily resolved, but as we hit the Kent countryside, around 10 miles from our destination, I started to feel the effects of the 32-degree heat and was running out of water. Miles came to the rescue with an energy gel, which gave me enough to reach the days stopover. Thankfully this was above a pub, so we were able to quench thirsts and recover.
Day two was an early start of the ferry, and we were up and out just after 4am. We heard from the BRC crew that IT systems were down around the world, but our crossing was unaffected, and it wasn't long before we were cruising through France, remembering to cycle on the other side of the road. Our destination for the day was Lille, with a relatively flat route ahead.
We learnt our lesson from day one, to combat the heat we made sure we stopped every 20 miles, had plenty of fluids available and a mega size bag of Haribo gummies was purchased in Duty Free. Our first stop, in the shade, was against some huge gates and what looked like a derelict house on a small country lane. It was long before the resident, an elderly gentleman came along to chat. Knowing very little French, I tried using the translation features of ChatGPT for a real time conversation. We managed to find out that people would try and steal the apples from his yard, and we were able to inform him that we were good people and would not be doing such a thing. We chatted for a while, hit and miss with the translation, and gave up when his translation told us to like and subscribe! Who knows to what!!
A few miles in a noticed my chain playing up a little and let Miles know about this but thought no more but this became a problem when we ascended to the village of Cassel, our halfway point, and my chain snapped. We pushed the bike to the village and decided to get lunch and look at the problem afterwards. I did have a magic link but hadn't fitted one in years. Time to re-learn! Luckily, Miles chatted to an English couple, Rich and Lucy. They hadn't seen any other English during their stay in the area and had spotted the Barnsley Road Club tops. Rich knew all about replacing the link, so we worked together to resolve. Unfortunately, though, I had a cracked derailleur, but was able to limp to Lille.
The next morning, we visited the local bike shop, Les Mains dans le Guidon (https://lesmainsdansleguidon.fr/wazemmes). What an amazing place! The idea behind the shop is that this is a workshop. You pay around €10 for the day to use the workshop; you fix the bike, and they teach you how to do it. So, you learn from the experience! It was a shame to find out that they did not have a 10-speed derailleur, but we would fit a 9 speed and see how it went. After an hour of fitting, testing and gear tweaking, we had the best solution possible for the rest of the journey. It wasn't 100%, probably about 80% working, with occasional gear slips and coaxing of the gears up and down to slot into place but good enough to get us to Germany! A quick clean of the hands with soap, followed by rubbing in ground coffee, got the hands clean ready for the depart from Lille.
Our mission was to get to our stopover, a remote farm in a village called Froidchappelle in Belgium. We were promised hot food, if we got there before 21:30. It was almost mid-day before we left Lille, but we were determined to make it. Miles is a big football fan, and so a quick detour to the Lille stadium was in order and then I contacted ahead to let farm know we were on way with a few technical problems and hoped to make it on time. The route on this day would be more taxing with 3000 ft of climbing (hey we live in London, it's flat!), double the previous days. Our food stop was only a 1/4 of the way into the day, since we were way behind on time, and we randomly came across a roadside café doing burgers and chips, but, oh my, these were not your average burger van fare. Gorgeous food! The staff at Corinne et Sylvain "Le sel et ses frites" were super friendly and happy to fill our water bottles with ice and water for the continuing journey. We arrived at the farm, with no further bike problems and with minutes to spare for our hot food! Olivier, the host, showed us to our outdoor cabane, with outside toilet and sand to throw in after going (her husband would sort the waste the next day - poor chap!). We looked out over the fields, chilling with the horses and cows, ate an amazing meal and then crashed, just before the thunderstorms and all-night rain.
Luckily, the rain had stopped before dawn and things were starting to freshen up. We were told that the thunderstorms had cleared the air, and we would more than likely have a dry day. Great news for us, as we knew that this day would be our most challenging. We were headed towards the Ardennes region crossing back into France and then across back to Belgium. The mechanic at the Lille bike workshop had informed us to expect short but sharp climbs and a rollercoaster of a ride. We did about 6000ft that day but had an almost equal amount of descent to enjoy. A tough day, but we ground it out, enjoyed some amazing scenery and only had a couple of punctures along the way. That night, we stayed in private accommodation, in another tiny village called Sampont, and were upgraded to a biggest double bed ever and our own bathroom, rather than shared. Hurray!
We were excited for day 5, as on this day we would be cycling through four countries in one day! Starting off in Belgium, we were quickly into Luxembourg and, as you can imagine, the roads here were immaculate, with lovely road surfaces and considerate drivers. Due to its size, we would only be in Luxembourg for 30 miles or so. During a rest for water, a local informed us that we were so near to the capital city that we should detour and take a look. Very tempting as we were within touching distance, but we decided to stay on track and follow our original route. We were aiming for lunch at Schengen, a small village in Luxembourg, which closely borders both Germany and France and where the Schengen agreement was signed back in the 80s to remove borders and allow free movement within the Schengen zone. I had planned that we would stop off for lunch at Café MVP, well, typically, it was closed on Mondays, so we opted for the 'corner shop' next door and sat out munching on sandwiches and crisps, looking out across the bridge to Germany. Once back on the bikes, we quickly had our first taste of Germany, before turning right and entering France, within a minute or so, flying past a mini-Eiffel Tower!
We ended the day in a hotel in Saarbrücken, in Germany. We put our bikes into secure cycle parking at the hotel and checked in. Soon another cyclist appeared to check in but was not happy that he would need to put his bike into the parking. He wanted to put it in his room, since he was taking part in the Transcontinental Race across Europe to Istanbul and needed to be up and out by 3am. The hotel was having none of it though and he had to, begrudgingly, dismantle things strapped to his bicycle. Miles gave a helping hand to get things off and up to his room. We finished the evening with a Chinese meal, listening to three merry English guys chatting away about being attacked by squirrels. They turned to us, at the end of the evening to guess where our accents came from. Lancashire apparently! I've lived too long in London!
Our next day would take us to Heidelberg and a chance to meet up with the BRC team, but not before a 91-mile cycle from Saarbrücken, taking in Kaiserslautern and Mannheim along the route. A relatively trouble-free day, but we soon learned that the German drivers could get a little trigger happy with the horn on the faster rural routes and we felt much safer when we were sent out into the farm field cycle routes and into the smaller villages. After lunch in Kaiserslautern, we set off and the heavens opened. We soon realised that our bike phone holders were little prepared for such heavy rain, so we turned back to a recently passed Lidl to purchase some sandwich bags, or cling film, which we could wrap the phones in and continue using the maps for our journey. Miles took shelter outside, whilst I popped in to find something. As usual, there were long queues to the checkouts and by the time I got outside the rain had stopped! Onwards to Heidelberg, and no further showers followed.
We were due to pop into my eldest son's flat in Mannheim. He is out there studying and working and since we were going to pass just minutes away from his place it would seem crazy not to. A ring of the bell to his property, and we were tasked with carrying the bikes, and panniers, up three floors of steps. Oh my! It was harder than the hills! The quick one hour stop off, soon increased as we popped out for a meal and it was post 22:00 before we set off, on the remaining 13-mile journey to Heidelberg. The stretches of road between villages were hardly lit at all, and our bike lights were more suitable to the lit London roads. So, we took our time and cycled safely to the hotel. It also meant that we were too late to meet up with the BRC gang that evening. We were both shattered, and it looked likely that we would end up doing the cycle to Schwäbisch ourselves in the morning rather than making the organised 8am start but we were able to introduce ourselves to Mattias and Andre, as we checked in to the hotel, as they had spotted our BRC club jerseys.
I awoke, the next day, with time to see off the BRC and German cyclists. Personally, I was shattered and felt it was unfair to awaken Miles, who seemed pretty cosy in bed. So, I walked up to the Heidelberg McDonalds to meet Steve, Josh, Connor and Dominic. Dominic was kind enough to get me a wake up shot of coffee, after noting how tired I looked, and then I was introduced to Gerhard, Klaus and Dietmar, all ready for the final stage of the journey to the twin town. We would follow in a few hours and meet them there.
The final day of cycling was now becoming routine, a few climbs here and there, a few beeps from the German drivers and some amazing scenery looking out towards Stuttgart and surrounding countryside. We arrived too late to meet up the Zeiselberg Gaststätte, so opted for a meal in the Schwäbisch Gmünd market square, before everything shut for the night.
We were finally able to meet up with the gang in the morning for breakfast, just prior to our meet and greet with the major. We had a wonderful tour of the town. It's a beautiful place and we would like to return one day to visit again.
We travelled over to Mannheim that evening and spent the next few days at my eldest's place before tackling the eight-train commute to Northwest Belgium, our final stop over. The next day would be a simple flat 40 miles to the Calais ferry terminal. At Dover, we were lucky enough to be picked up by my wife and family, the bikes strapped to the roof of the car and the legs rested…. for now!
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