Stage 10: The Detour to a Bed in France
Some stages go exactly as planned. This one didn’t. What started as an ordinary day of cycling like almost every day on this trip, riding on a hunch in search of a campsite, because a cyclist with a small tent always fits somewhere ended with an extra ten kilometres pedalled back to a Campanile hotel. In hindsight, it turned out to be one of the best decisions of the whole trip.
From the Rhine into Alsace
The day picks up where stage 9 left off: at the campsite on the Rhine, right near the border. Early on, the route crosses the border between Switzerland and France a small sign with the two flags side by side marks the exact moment the country officially changes.
Shortly after, the route passes one of the locks on the Grand Canal d’Alsace, recognisable by the flower boxes on the bridge and the typical green railings exactly the kind of hydraulic-engineering detail France has plenty of once you cycle into the Rhine valley.
Canals and rivers, kilometre after kilometre
Near Mulhouse comes a deliberate routing choice: left or right around the Vosges. Since the Rhine side of that range had already been ridden on an earlier trip, the choice is easy this time the other side, which means heading a bit further south to pass beneath the Vosges. That southern line then follows the canals, and that’s exactly what gives this day its relatively flat, steady character.
Midday brings the route past yet another stretch of canal, calm and wide, with a bridge in the background and the outline of a small town on the horizon.
By mid-afternoon the scenery changes: the EuroVelo 6, the cycle route that runs straight across France along the major rivers, now crosses an old, rusted iron bridge over a quiet river the kind of structure that’s clearly been standing for decades, with flaking red and green paint and lush overgrown banks on both sides.
The failed campsite gamble
Then, at the end of the day, things go slightly differently than usual. Riding on a hunch, you’d normally roll into a village or small town and find a campsite without much trouble that had worked fine for the previous nine days. Not today. No campsite in sight at the spot I’d been counting on, which meant another ten kilometres of cycling not the most obvious way to close out a day that, at 117 kilometres, was already the longest of the whole trip.
A bed for the first time in ten days
The destination: a Campanile hotel. And after ten days of tent, sleeping mat, and campsite showers, an ordinary bed with a private shower feels almost decadent. In hindsight, despite the annoying extra kilometres, it was more than worth it sometimes the detour is exactly what you need.
Burgers and an 80 by 60 menu board
Arriving so late meant cooking on the camp stove was no longer an option that evening hunger won out over the usual campsite ritual. At the burger place around the corner, I immediately ran into a small, all too recognisable problem: no working phone to scan the QR code. Fortunately, there was still an old fashioned solution on the wall a menu board roughly 80 by 60 centimetres above the bar and now in my hands, big enough to read.
