Lahr/Schwarzwald

Raining and around 10 degrees

Last night I told Jody that I had a plan for today as long as it wasn’t raining too much. She was keen at the time though may be a bit wary of my grand schemes in future! Our choices were my plan, reading books in Nico all day, or driving somewhere else in the rain and trying to find another campsite. So the grand plan won out, and I thought we had a pretty fabulous day. I felt really good cos we did a fair bit of exercise. Jeremy left around 9am, and it wasn’t raining much at that stage so Jody agreed to my masterplan for the day. Titisee Lake is supposed to be really nice and is 30kms away. There is a bit of a climb up there though, so my plan was for us to take a train there, and bike back – how hard could that be? The train ride went well though it started raining a bit harder while we were getting there. We arrived around 11.30, and immediately found some really cool shops with clothing, souvenirs, cuckoo clocks etc. We parked the bikes and went shopping. We already were a bit wet at that stage, and found some awesome jackets which are lined with fleece and are really warm and cosy. We both ended up buying one, and putting them on under our rain coats. We also bought some buffs to wear under our helmets. Oh, and small cuckoo clocks with magnets on the back. We also had an awesome lunch of sausage and fried potatoes.

Then we started biking to the next town – Hinterzarten - which was 4 kms away. We made it there quite easily, though were slightly surprised at the number of hills even on that short leg. Then we tried to find our directions to the next township. Despite asking directions from a lady who spoke great english, and using google maps, and the map that we had taken a photo of from a bike shop, we failed in our quest. By that stage we had walked and biked up some very steep climbs, and then biked back down them again. It rained quite a lot, and we were pretty wet from the waist down. We finally gave up when we were headed up this mountain bike path that got so steep that it was hard for me to walk up without my bike, and I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to bike down it. And there was a drop of many many metres down to the main road which were unkeen to fall down. So we backtracked, found the train station and jumped on. We got off at Kirchzarten as I had convinced Jody that it was a lovely ride from there back to Nico.
Yes it was lovely the other day, and still quite picturesque today. The driving rain in our faces and the chill in our legs and feet sort of spoiled the moment tho!

We managed to find the supermarket on the way back – how did more blueberries and raspberries arrive in the trolley? As well as a couple of bottles of wine. When we got back to Nico, we stripped off our wet clothes, and both had a shower for over 10 minutes. We had turned the heater on in Nico, and when we got back from our showers, we finally started to thaw out. So it was supposed to take an hour 37 minutes to bike back, and was around 30kms which I thought was mainly downhill. I have traced our route, and golly knows where we were actually supposed to go, but our total trip was around 17kms. But the number of hills added quite a bit of effort to that though. I had thought we would be back early afternoon, and spend the rest of the afternoon reading books in Nico. We didn’t get back until after 4pm, and the thawing out process took another hour. Then reading books in bed was great. Nico can get lovely and warm with the heater.

Jody cooked another lovely meal with baked chicken and potatoes. She also got a bit carried away with the spray and wipe so things are looking a bit cleaner. It is still supposed to rain in a lot of Europe tomorrow, but we think we will leave here and head for Strasbourg which is only an hour away, but supposed to be lovely. That is in France, so we will be bonjouring, merci beaucouping, ouing, and noning with the best of them.

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