Today we did a shorter cycle – 67 km from Carspach to Basel.
I’m now including Budapest in the map. The distance on the google map is not accurate as I just put in -Roscoff, Saint Nazaire and our start and end point for today, on the map. The Strava app records how many kilometres we cover each day – to date we’ve covered 1,538 km. We’re over half way!
I mentioned before but Veloroute 6 is known as the rivers route. We first followed the Loire from St Nazaire as far as Digoin and then through a series of canals and rivers we have arrived at the Rhine today. Specifically:
1) Canal du Centre got us from the Loire at Digoin last Sunday to Chalon-sur-Saône last Tuesday.
2) We then travelled along the River Saône from Chalon-sur-Saône to St-Jean-de-Losne on Wednesday
3) Near St-Jean-de-Losne on Wednesday we picked up Canal du Rhone au Rhin. This canal incorporates sections of the river Doubs. This canal brought us to the Rhine today, Saturday, just before Basel.
That’s the waterways lecture over!
Bags packed and ready to go from our lovely, (but cold wifi) hotel in Carspach.
We had just set off on the road when this trailer ahead of us with its heavy load had a blow out on its left rear tyre, it gave us quite a fright with its loud noise!
Up close and personal with a heron
Thanks to Sandie for recognising these birds, quoting her reply to my enquiry: They are called Egyptian Goose and are an African species, but found in France and the Netherlands. Also introduced to S. England and have become feral. Found in parkland, rivers, lakes or marshes. They have a dark eye surround, hence the name.
We passed this second world war monument at Rixheim to the Combats de la Hardt from 28th November to 4th December 1944. Using google translate, there’s an account of it here on the Society of the history of Rixheim’s webpage.
There was a tank one side of the canal and a gun, (no photo) on the other
A family followed by its very elegant mother
More sheer elegance
We have met many roller skaters on the Veloroute – now there’s an idea!
The temperature has dropped and it makes the cycling so much easier. The forecast over the next few days is interesting – I’m hoping that we will out-cycle the bad weather 🙂
We had many straight stretches like this towards the end of today’s cycle, it meant that we could cover the distance quite easily. 
Cool temperatures AND flat, straight cycling – what more could we ask for!
We stopped for lunch in Huningue, first on our way in we saw this graffiti 🙂
Huningue plaza where we lunched
Arriving into Basel. We took this photo from France side. To the left is Germany and to the right is Switzerland.
Coming from France we first crossed into Germany
And then into Switzerland. We were surprised there was no passport check.
Our stop for the night was Basel and we will take a rest day here tomorrow. We had dinner and then a walk around the city centre. There are plenty of young people and bikes! Basel is Switzerland’s third city after Zurich and Geneva with a population of 175,000.
Mittlere Brücke (undergoing works)
At 10pm last night, people were floating down the river on some flotation device, though we couldn’t see exactly what 🙂
Good night Basel!
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