9th July Efringen Kirchen to Waldshut - 85k | Cycling the Western Front, Hereford, Moselle, Rhine & Aare

Tuesday July 9th - Warm to hot and sunny all day, 20°C to 27ºC

Land Hotel Efringen Kirchen

25k later back on the Rhine

Uninteresting paths outside Basel

Now we're into real forests

There must be an airport nearby

Farm land is nice and flat but ….

We hit the Rhine east of Basel

It's afternoon nap time and we're not moving.

The rhine at its best

Our best lunch stop this trip

By the Rhine in a secluded spot

Time to cool the feet

What's good for the goose is good for the gander

The Old wooden bridge across the Rhine at Bad Sackingen

Bridge at Bad Sackingen

Again, Bridge at Bad Sackingen

Dam upstream from Bad Sackingen

An almost perfect day of 85k in dry warm weather. 20k through farmland, 10k of poorly signed and not very good cycle paths through the Swiss city of Basel, then 55k along a beautiful section of the Rhine, through the old German villages of Bad Sackingen and Laufenburg and on to Waldshut where we stayed in the perfect cyclists accommodation - just like Tullebudgera but a little bit more up market - and it has a real clothes line and no-one cares if you hang out your washing while wrapped in just a towel.

It was not a good night. The room was large, dinner perfect, breakfast wonderful, internet fast, but we were opposite the train station and all night there were trains thundering by. At 2.30am I had to get up and close the windows and then it was stifling hot. I get up early in the morning to Face Time Bonnie. I look so awful. She thinks I've been pigging out on bread. No, it's the trains. Breakfast is a really nice spread, and they ask us how we want the eggs, scrambled or boiled. I want fried but it's too hard to describe so I settle for scrambled, but I'm not hungry and only eat half. The meal last night was filling, we drank too much, and had no sleep so didn't appreciate the laid on breakfast.

We leave late. It's After 9am. It's not a long day, about 85k we estimate. The first 20k is through uninteresting farmland until we hit Basel. The city is on the Switzerland side of the Rhine, but somehow the border does a loop around to include Basel on the German side into the Swiss side. Don't know how they managed that, but we were stuck with Swiss cycling signs and Swiss cycling paths that weren't a match to the Germans. And we got lost, even with Ian's GPS. He even sent two young German girls off in teh wrong direction. They were going to Biel in Switzerland, through the centre of Basel. But 20 minutes later we meet up with them again. Bum steer. They laugh. They tag along for a while until we see some bridges that give us a landmark. But there's Swiss police telling us we can't go there and we need to go here and we're lost again.

10k and 1hr later we're through to the other side of Basel. It's very flat and the most uninteresting farming land. We stop for a cup of tea just before Rheinfelden in a council carpark. Not worth a photo. But soon after Rheinfelden, we strike some real forests and the cycle path takes us one metre from the Rhine's edge. We strike a group of swans - (is it a flock of swans or a gaggle of geese, I don't know) but there asleep on the cycle path, and they're not moving. We manoeuvre through them and soon find an exquisite spot on the river. A seat under a shaded tree with its own little beach. We spend almost an hour there having lunch, paddling in the water, just sitting. It was the highlight of the day. I had seen a sign earlier noting the water temperature at 19ºC - too cold to swim in, just right for cooling the feet without turning them blue.

Moving on we arrive at Bad Sackingen. And take a wrong turn that leads us to the old timber bridge over the Rhine. The village is full of tourists. School holidays have started. It's a maze, but an interesting maze of old houses and shops getting out of town. We look back at the old bridge and upstream there's the new dam.

A fe k more and we're at another pretty German village called Laufenburg. A bit more farmland, and it's getting quite warm. We stop for a cup of tea at a cemetery and fill up our water bottles. We're only 6k short of our destination when we spy an Aldi. We know we're going to the GoSports Motel in the middle of farmland just outside Waldshut - it's not likely to have a restaurant, so we stop off at Aldi and buy a picnic dinner - smoked salmon, lettuce, cheese, onions, capsicum and tomato.

30 minutes later and we arrive at the Go sports Motel Waldshut. It's brilliant. Some people might give it 2 stars, we give it 5 stars. It's our kind of place to stay. Friendly people, simple room, a place to do and hand your washing, a place to store the bikes, away from the traffic and trains, a place to have a picnic dinner, and it sells cold beer and cold really nice Reisling. Unfortunately it only comes in 1 litre bottles, but we have to buy one. We'll try not to drink it all and toss the rest out. As if.

After showering and washing and hanging it on a real clothes line, we spread out our picnic on the terrace and enjoy. This is our kind of place.