From Gateaux's to Chateaux's!

After a final mooch around Luzern spending up our last Swiss Francs in the market we headed out of Switzerland and into the Black Forest region of southern Germany - home of the Black Forest Gateaux! We ended up staying almost a week on a funny little campsite in a town called Schonau-im-Schwarzwald. We were the only people on the site (and the town I think!), until the weekend when things became a little weird - two drunk women staggering around the site (no, I wasn't one of them!) and then 3 men walk into the toilet block with guitars and start playing and singing in a room with a sign on it saying 'sauna'! Nice site though and very friendly people - they even gave us a bottle of wine as we left. We stayed longer than we really planned because we had about 5 days of really nice weather and the area is good for biking and walking, so we thought we'd better make the most of it. When we first got here we looked around at the nice rolling hills and thought we were in for a bit of gentle biking compared to Switzerland. How wrong we were - our first ride out started with a 10.5km constant climb and 600m of ascent! But all that hard work did mean that we didn't feel even the slightest bit guilty as we scoffed a big chunk of Black Forest Gateaux when we got back to the site! When the weather took a turn for the worse we decided it was a good time to move on. We realised again how hilly the region is as we dragged poor Daisy, who is now carrying more weight than ever on this trip (no, not because of all the Black Forest Gateaux we'd eaten, or all the sausages Rob bought in Germany - but the bikes she's carrying again, plus extra things we've picked up over the months and all the shopping we'd just bought), up a really long steep climb. Coming down the other side we had to stop a couple of times to let her brakes cool down - judging by the burning smell they were getting a touch warm!! We stopped overnight at Bingen on a 'Stellplatz', which is the German equivalent of the French 'Aires'. It was great, right on the bank of the Rhine, 6 euros for the night (about £4), 1 euro for electric and you can order fresh bread which gets delivered to the site at 7.00am the next morning. Bingen is where the Rhine widens out and swings north into the 80km Rhine Valley and despite the dreary grey sky and rain, it was a nice drive through the valley which is littered with dozens of chateaux's on either side of river. We've read that fuel in Luxembourg is cheap so as we're down to our last 12 quid that's our next stop!!!

A free shower in the Black Forest!

Biking in the Black Forest

Rhine Valley 1

Rhine Valley 2