Vosges to Strasbourg

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Over the Vosges to Strasbourg

Day 5 of 18 · Vilsberg to near Strasbourg · ~85 km · France

Day 5 had two very different halves. The morning was quiet canal towpath and a climb through the Vosges. The afternoon was one of the great cities of Alsace, on foot, camera in hand, GPS tracking abandoned somewhere around the edge of town because there was simply too much to stop and look at.

Through the Vosges by canal

The route out of the Sarre-Union area picked up a canal almost immediately and stayed with it for the climb the Canal de la Marne au Rhin threading its way up through the Vosges foothills, locks stepping the water up the valley one at a time. One lock house stood alone against the wooded hillside, white-walled and shuttered, looking like it had been there since the canal was first cut. This is the gentle way to cross a mountain range: let the water find the gradient, and follow it.

Saverne: a town built around its château

The climb crested at Saverne, and the town more than earned the stop. The old town centre is a run of half timbered houses leaning into each other along the main street, flags hanging from carved balconies, a market square with a carousel turning lazily in the sun. But the real showpiece is the Château des Rohan an enormous red sandstone palace with a colonnaded facade that looks more like Versailles than anything you’d expect to find in a small Alsace town, sitting at the edge of the old fortified quarter. A fountain square nearby, book stalls set up under the plane trees, made for an easy reason to get off the bike for a while before pushing on.

Past Saverne the canal towpath opened out into flat farmland, wide fields reflecting a sky doing dramatic things with cumulus clouds the last of the climbing done, the descent onto the Alsace plain underway.

Camp at the edge of Strasbourg, then back out on foot

By early afternoon the European Parliament building appeared on the outskirts glass and curved concrete, flags of every member state lined up out front, looking almost sculptural against the canal it sits beside. Not far past it, the day’s campsite came into view, right on the edge of the city. Tent up, bike parked and then straight back out again, because Strasbourg’s medieval core was not something to leave for another day.

The Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg dominated the rest of the afternoon the rose window and the sheer density of carved stone on the west facade are the kind of thing photos never quite capture, and the square in front of it was packed with people doing exactly what everyone does there: standing still, looking straight up. Nearby, the Maison Kammerzell’s black timber frame stood out even among Strasbourg’s crowded skyline of gables and dormers. A wander through Petite France followed the old tanners’ quarter, half timbered houses leaning over a canal gone bottle green in the afternoon light, willows trailing into the water. Narrow alleys connected all of it, quiet even a few streets back from the crowds at the cathedral.

It was 2020, and the masks on plenty of faces in the crowd were a reminder that this trip was happening in an unusual year but Strasbourg on a sunny July afternoon didn’t feel diminished by it. If anything, the streets felt like they’d been waiting for someone to come and look at them properly again.

The loop into the old town and back to the tent added roughly 15 km on top of the day’s tracked route untracked, but a fitting way to close out a day that had already covered a mountain range and a border adjacent capital.