DAY EIGHTEEN… 52 miles (83 km)
We woke to the sound of rain on our tents heralding rather bad overcast and wet weather for much of the day. Although we managed to forge ahead of the storms for the most part, I needed to wash clothes. It was another annoying drying day but somehow all the clothes ended up dry.
We were delayed horribly by an infestation of ants. Hundreds and thousands of them had invaded Tim’s tent at the front where all our food is stored. What with the earwigs as well, Tim spent ages trying to evacuate them from all our stuff. Bread today came to the site. There was a poor choice, but it was adequate and better than any Super-U offering.
Our journey started late. We were unsure how to manage this last stage due to a dearth of campsites. Our options were to do a marathon ride of 120kms to just outside of Basle, camping in some massive city (Mulhouse) or to do a huge detour of 6-7 km to reach another campsite. Due to our late start we chose the latter.
Pretty uneventful day’s cycling, following canals most of the way and were pleased to catch sight of a couple of baby beavers on a stretch of canal which had used a woven material to line the sides with… much more beaver friendly.
We passed through the Peugeot base of Montbéliard. Nice parks on one side, nasty factories on the other, belching out concrete into concrete mixers and manufacturing paints and other things. At the end of the day our detour took us through a rather down at heel town where youths looked positively dangerous if you had met them in the dark. The campsite was, of course, at the top of a huge hill, but was quiet and pleasant, and sunny. We hope for an early night.
