This was our last day/night in the van before our cycle trip. We set off to get to the site where our van will be stored for the next few weeks. It wasn’t far and as we crossed the Rhine into Germany we were listening to ‘I like to ride my bicycle’ by Queen...it seemed very apt. Janice did her impersonation of Angela Merkel in the style of Tracy Ullman, “zey like my hair, zey like my shoes”, she is very good at it but we must be careful she doesn’t do it near any Germans. There were no official border checks but there were static police stopping cars for checking on the French side of the border and also German police doing the same thing on their side. We didn’t get stopped, thankfully. I didn’t want to be suspected of carrying cannabis resin blocks when it was only my homemade Grasmere Gingerbread recipe!! It looks very similar wrapped up in cling film!
We arrived at the large site close to the Rhine about 22 km north of Basel. On a side issue, why is it Basel (pronounced Barzel) in Germany and Switzerland and Balê (pronounced Barl) is France? And why do they both insist on making the ‘r’ sound in words where there is no ‘r’?? The EU should have sorted this mispronunciation problem a long time ago!
No problems at the site, they were expecting us and the arrangements for storing the van was nice and easy. The staff spoke excellent English. The weather was super too. We pitched near the reception for one night and had lunch followed by a ride into the town.
This was the view of the Rhine valley from the site entrance. The town of Bad Bellingen was known for its thermal spa but other than that it was pleasant but not particularly interesting. We cycled along to the Rhine cycle path and I dipped my toes into the river as some kind of rite of passage??
We returned to the site for final preparations. Janice declared that the brakes on her bike were poor and I spent the next hour fiddling with them. In the process I had to ask the site staff to borrow a ‘monkey wrench’ to loosen a bolt, surprisingly it wasn’t a term that the staff knew so I enjoyed the process of trying to explain what I wanted.....it was quite humorous asking for something to do with a monkey when I actually wanted large pliers! I wasn’t too happy about the bike because we had the bike serviced a few weeks ago so I hadn’t double checked them before we set off other than checking that they were working.
All ready for the off tomorrow. We cycle to Basel and then get the train to Konstanz. Let the whining commence!
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