Day 37, Wasserburg – Hagnau, 29kms

We started the day late after breakfast at the hotel.   

Our plan was to catch the ferry to Konstanz, ride some more of Lake Constance then head towards the “Romantic Way” ride.

After arriving in Konstanz, along with far too many tourists (school holidays) we changed our plans.  Lake Constance is currently like the south coast between Christmas and New Year – wall to wall people. Konstanz looks to be very pretty as we have been told, but way too many people around for it to be enjoyable. The nearby campgrounds were full, so after a short wander around and lunch we boarded another ferry to take us to the other (less popular) side of the lake.

We arrived at Meersburg and rode another 10kms to Hagnau where the van park advertised it was full.  We spoke nicely to the manager who told us we could pitch the tents on the lawn of a permanent van which was currently unoccupied.  That’s the beauty of having two small tents.

We have also been warned by some locals that we should not be around the lake on Wednesday which is a public holiday for the Swiss national day.  Apparently the Swiss head here in droves!

Our plan now is that we will head north along the “Romantic Way” which vaguely runs from Fussen to Wurzburg.

Walenstadt to Wasserburg

Day 35 – Walenstadt – St Margarethe, 81kms

Last night when we arrived at the campground we noticed a storm warning system in the van park.  Lights flash orange to advise of extreme storms.  After a steamy afternoon (temperature wise) we noticed an arrange light flashing across the lake as the winds increased. 

A huge thunder and lightning show had us battering down and helping 3 young girls try to put up a tent they’d never seen before!  One was Swiss, but living in Sydney, so we think she was pleased to see some good Aussie spirit when we offered to assist!

The storm passed, but just as we started to pack up this morning the rain started again.

Today’s ride saw us back on the mighty Rhine River.  The headwaters are not nearly as impressive as the same river we followed last year on our ride. We rode through heavy rain again for 0.5 – 1 hr but with a tail wind and slight downhill it was better than heading the other way.

We rode through 3 countries today - Switzerland, Austria and Lichtenstein.  Some of the border crossings still exist and the cars stop at them even though they weren’t manned!  Phill went from Switzerland to Austria to buy some groceries and realised he didn’t have any ID with him – he had a few anxious moments before he realised he wouldn’t ride back through any check.

After 80k we decided to call it quits.  Soaking wet we called into a campsite to see if they had a cabin.  We ended up staying in the campground owner’s private cabin!  We think they took pity on us as we were Aussie and had come such a long way to stay with them.

The afternoon was spent reading, trying to dry our clothes and shoes, taking walks between showers etc.  We also managed to catch some of the Olympics on the TV.  News is few and far between when you can’t read any headlines, newspapers etc.  We rely on the computer for most of our news and even then we are often concerned about our battery life.

We have made use of various awning, carports etc in the last few days to try and keep dry.

Day 36 – St Margarethe – Wasserburg.  28kms

Not much rain overnight, but as we gathered our gear together the heavens opened.  Luckily we were still in the cabin, so decided to sit it out.  We headed out of Switzerland at about 8.30, then stopped for morning tea at Hard in Austria, where it rained again, then pushed on to Lindau in Germany. 

Lindau is a little “island” in Lake Constance, accessible via a small bridge.   We made a detour into there to have a look – very touristy, but a beautiful spot even on a rainy/overcast day.

We have made a decision to book into a hotel today – some repairs necessary to Steve’s bike and we’re not sure what the weather will do.

Day 34 27th July Unterageri to Walenstadt

We retraced our path 1.5k back into town this morning to head off along some quite flat terrain for about 10k to catch a train. Only catch was there was  a nasty uphill just at the end. The train trip was to get us around some 3 rating climbs. Our map has climbs rated from one to three with three being pretty ghastly on a fully loaded bike! We have previously ridden two 3 raters in the one day and decided if there is a train to take us around them we will catch it. We have mastered the ticket machines at the small Swiss railways stations which are often unmanned. We were welcomed in English to the machine today but that is where the English ended, the rest was in Swiss. Not anything like French or German. We even have the change of train and platform down pat and can even help old ladies onto the train while keeping a bike steady with one leg.  We arrived at the station we were planning to so all good.

We had a quick bite to eat and headed off along Lake walensee, called this because it is shaped like a whale, so the local transport police told us, but we thought that was a loose use of the comparison. We chatted to two Transport Police at a railway station where we had pulled into get a drink. One of them had spent time in Oz on an exchange visit at school and so had very good Australian.

Once again the scenery was very pretty today. There were two tunnels for us to negotiate today, each about 1k long. They were well lit and had small openings to the lake. They were part of the road and rail system and were for cyclists and walkers only so we were very safe. On leaving the first tunnel we had a 25% climb to negotiate which we attacked with gusto but found we had to walk the last bit of it. It was quite short so no real chore.

While riding along this area we kept our eye on several hang gliders above us, we could not see where they were taking off from but against the rocky face of the mountains they made an awesome sight.

When we arrivd at camp we were entertained by more gliders and a helicopter which appeared to be assisting with maintenance on the electricity poles steel structures high up the hills. The camp grnd is again by a lake, very pretty and vveerrry full.

Day 33, Lucerne – Unterageri, 50kms

We started our ride out of Lucerne on sealed bike paths, but as we got out into the country they became well maintained crushed gravel paths, through some beautiful forest area.  There were some great chainsaw carvings along the path.

Most of the ride was easy going as 40 of the 50 kms was either flat or downhill, then we had 10 continuous kms of uphill through another forested walking area which had plenty of man-made steps in the adjacent stream. This was all part of the local water control.

We stopped for lunch at Unterageri and were about to sit down when some Swiss people invited us to join them.  They were from Zurich and had driven the hour to have a ride around the local lake.  They had reasonable English, so it was interesting to talk to them about Switzerland.

Our camping spot today has lake view.  As it has been very hot we availed ourselves of the refreshing water in the swimming spot on the lake. There is a farmer t our front door almost baling his hay and wrapping in plastic wrap, quite fun to watch.

Day 32 Lucerne 0ks

Today was spent doing chores and sightseeing.

The campground was close to the city so we walked into town in the morning – about 2kms around beautiful Lake Lucerne.  The vista from the city was lovely with the lake teeming with sailboats and people enjoying the warm weather.

Lucerne has an “old” and “new”city.  The view from the ramparts at the back of the old city was stunning.  Lovely old tower clocks have been preserved and are on show in part of the ramparts.  Buildings and their eaves are often highly decorated and it’s lovely just wandering around and discovering little plazas with even more features.

Over the last couple of days there has been an increase in the number of hikers we have seen.  They are highly catered for with a fantastic signage system, not unlike the bike path signage, although these signs show distances in hours and minutes!

We forgot to mention that a few days ago we rode across three airfield runways, with boom gates to stop the traffic if a plane is landing!  It was obviously a base used by the army.  No-one showed any sign of concern at us being there.

Last night the campground was bursting at the seams and we ended up sharing our site with two one man tents.  One of the guys was walking from Rome to Geneva across the Swiss Alps!  The other guy was a bike rider who we knew was French.  He had spent one night in France on his ride, the last night in Lucerne, but we couldn’t fathom where he was going to or where he was from!

Day 31, 24 July, Krattigen to Lucerne, 49kms

Happy Birthday to Sam – hope you had a good day!!

It was much warmer overnight, but the dew was very heavy, making for a wet pack up.  At least we weren’t in a “mountain shadow” this morning and the sun was very warming.

We headed off to Interlaken, with a downhill run for about 6kms, then flat for the next 12kms.  We knew what was coming though and decided to once again take the train to avoid the grade 3 mountain climbs. 

Interlaken seems to be a major tourist hub for extreme sports and appeared to be very tourist orientated.  We watched paragliders high above us with snow covered hills as a backdrop.  While we were having coffee some tandem paragliders passed over us and landed in the adjacent park.  The boys weren’t convinced to have a go!

The trains have been very easy to get on and off with our bikes and today we had a dedicated carriage for them, which allowed us to take a seat and enjoy the scenery, which was simply stunning.

We got off the train at Sarnen, had lunch and rode another 30kms to Lucerne.  Our afternoon ride was beside the lake and generally flat.  We have decided to stay here an extra day to look around and catch up on chores.