7 June, 2015

During the night we are awakened by flashes of lightening and the sound of thunder, the second night in a row.  Once again the morning starts with clear skies.  We have decided to make an early start to beat the heat, so we are up at 5am.  For those of you who know us, you will appreciate how much of an effort this was.

After my extensive research last night, we have decided to take a direct, cross-country route to Donaueschingen, the source of the Danube, using local cycle paths.  My fears about the quality of the signposting were realised.  Once we were clear of Waldshut, we started on a well-marked route, but further on we had to leave this path for another which proved to be much less reliable.  We found overselves, on several occasions, faced with decisions with absolutely no clue as to the right path to take.  This wasted a lot of time and energy, for example, on one occasion at a fork in the track we just had to guess, left or right? We chose left and after about 2 kilometres the track just ended at a farmer’s field.  The worst of it was that we had just run down a steep hill which we now had to climb all the way back up again.  At another point we were frustrated to miss the sight of a steam train which we heard in the distance because we had taken a wrong turning again.  We suspect there must have been some sort of show nearby because we saw a number of vintage tractors and cars on the road.

As the morning drew on the temperature rose steadily and so did our sense of frustration, having got up at 5am we were wasting too much time on way-finding.  To add insult to injury the route was the most testing we have faced since the first couple of days of the tour.  More than once we were faced with gradient signs showing 15% – after a month on the flat we have lost our climbing legs.  There was, however, the compensation of beautiful countryside; woodland and open meadows full of flowers, cows with cow-bells, wooden barns and cuckoo clock houses.

Despite the delays, we made Donaueschingen by mid-afternoon.  The guide we have for the Danube Trail did not show any campsites nearby so we chose a hotel at random.  When we asked if there was somewhere to store the bikes we were directed to a garage.  There were already a couple of dozen bikes in the garage, giving us a clue as to the popularity of the route we were about to embark on.