I really wasn’t sure how far I’d get today. It was 120 kilometres from Strasbuourg to Donaueschingen (Start of the Danube) but it was also some 3,600 feet of climbing as well. So I thought I’d just see how it goes.
To start the ride was lovely, lots of other cyclists about and it seemed as if everyone was on holiday – unfortunately this turned out to be the case when I discovered all Supermarkets were closed and all the food I had was. – not much.
Any way, the land was flat and no hills visible, that is until the mist started lifting and then the hills started appearing. Even here there were castles. There had been some very busy people back in the day.
So as I continued, the hills started closing in a wee bit but I was able to block out the true nature of what I faced.
There are no pictures of the climb, I just kept telling myself, that it would be over at some point. When the gradient turned to 15 per cent, my bike finally became a push bike.
Luckily on the climb, thunderstorms started rolling in, when gave me the pretext to stop and shelter every so often but once I summited it was game on. The result was dead heat as I reached Donnaueschingen.
Now I knew that the Start of the Danube wasn’t a cute babbling spring in a grotto, but rather where two other streams joined together but,it could have had a bit more grandeur
Particularly as I’d cycled over 1000ks to get there.