Bikepacking 2023 - Saarbrücken (Germany) to Luxembourg City

Day #

22

State of Legs

:-)

---

	Distance (miles)	Distance (km)	Ascent (feet)	Ascent (metres)	Punctures
Today	68.8 miles	km	3310 feet	metres	0
Trip Totals	830.9 miles	km	27320 feet	metres	0

Today's Route

Relive the Route

Route So Far

---

Travelogue

We're now in Luxembourg City, the capital of Luxembourg. 

Today was numerically, our toughest day yet. And you road bikers, please note.... these bikes, loaded as they are, weigh much more than your carbon framed, lightweight thoroughbred! The Mule weighs three times as much as the road bike which M1 rides at home. So, nearly 70 miles on these bikes and over 3,000 feet ascent, is fairly major.

The day's route can be thought of as comprising two parts. The first 30 miles, from Saarbrücken to Merzig, followed the river Saar and was flat or slightly downhill all the way. After that, all bets were off and the second part of the route consisted of two major hilly sections and was quite challenging at times.

Much of the first ten miles or so of the river section ran parallel with a major road and it was quite industrial. Not the most pleasant backdrop to the riverside ride, but fast and easy.

There were no boulangeries today of course, this being Germany but there was a MacDonalds!

After Merzig, we cycled away from the river and soon found ourselves in countryside and most significantly, climbing into the hills. The weather started to change as well, and bit by bit became very windy.

Eventually, we reached the Luxembourg border!

This was at Schengen, a small Luxembourg town which actually sits at the border between three countries, namely Luxembourg, Germany and France. 

Knowing we had a rough 30 - 40 miles still to go, we decided to take a break and have lunch. There was a bar restaurant over the bridge, so we went in and enjoyed croque monsieurs, made with smoked salmon rather than the usual ham and a portion of fries. It set us up nicely.

In fact, you could say it was a treat and M1 spent most of his time trying to come up with a witty pun about how it was a Schengen Treaty. Get it? Sorry about that!

Not far after Schengen, we hit the first truly major hilly section. We were cycling on narrow country lanes, and after the first, fairly steep climb, M1 realised that they had missed a turn at the bottom of the hill so that all that effort had been a waste. Neither M1 nor M2 had noticed what looked on the map like a fork in the road, so M1 went back down to investigate, hoping to make sure M2 didn't cycle down only to have to cycle back up the same hill again!

Sure enough, there was a fork in the road, but the reason it had been discounted on the way up was that it was not tarmac like the road they'd continued on but had a strange concrete honeycomb surface. And it was also insanely steep! M1 took one look at it and instantly knew that neither M1 nor M2 would be able to cycle up it. M1 had serious doubts they'd be able to push the bikes up either. M1 was certain that the gradient was more than 15% but didn't know by how much. According to Strava, it would appear that at its steepest, it was 22%.

We examined the map and did identify a lengthy way around but M2 voted for trying to push the bikes up and then continuing on the route as planned, so that's what we did. M1 went first, and struggled with the heavy Mule, feet slipping on the concrete as he leaned into the steep gradient and only just managing to keep the front wheel on the ground. With a few stops on the way, the top of the steep section was achieved. M2 had started to follow and was doing well, but M1 parked The Mule and walked down to meet her and help push her bike up.

The top? No photo ever does justice to any gradient!

Mission accomplished. Or so we thought because as we worked our way up the remainder of this sizeable hill, we encountered two more similarly steep sections that the bikes had to be pushed up. 

M2 pushing the final few metres up the last steep section

It was exhausting but in the end, our mission really was accomplished and we relished cycling on the flat and then descending for a while.

It had started to rain before the steep section and we'd donned waterproofs but the moment they were on, the rain stopped! But now it started again, and rained quite convincingly. We pushed on and eventually found ourselves on the outskirts of Luxembourg City.

The city is much larger and busier than we'd expected. We cycled four or five miles through the concrete, modern city, which fortunately had reasonable cycle lanes, towards the centre where we had an apartment waiting for us. With or without cycle lanes, it was at times a little unpleasant. 

Finally, we reached the apartment and parked the bikes outside.

We then headed off on foot to find groceries, which required us to take a panoramic lift ("ascenseur") from the deep gorge the apartment is in up to streets above. After a ten minute walk, we found a small supermarket and bought food for the evening and for breakfast. Warning to would be visitors to Luxembourg! Prices are similar to those in Switzerland!

Tomorrow is a rest day. Unfortunately the weather forecast is for heavy rain, but regardless, we shall see the sights, whatever they are!

But before closing, could I invite the reader to give M2 a massive round of applause? Today's 69 mile ride was the longest bike she has ever done in her life and she did it on a bike loaded with panniers and on a route that included 22% gradients. And she could still walk at the end of it! Chapeau M2! An awesome performance!

Bikepacking 2023 - Rest day #2 in Saarbrücken

Day #

21

State of Legs

:-)

---

	Distance (miles)	Distance (km)	Ascent (feet)	Ascent (metres)	Punctures
Today	0 miles	km	0 feet	metres	0
Trip Totals	762.1 miles	km	24010 feet	metres	0

Today's Route

No Cycling Today

Route So Far

---

Travelogue

It's a Sunday here in a quiet Saarbrücken and we're into our second day of rest. Resting doesn't have to mean zero physical activity of course, and we decided to get some fresh air this morning and walked to and through the Bürger Park, which despite the name has nothing to do with burgers as far as we could tell.

We liked the park. It manages to balance traditional park ingredients such as trees and the river which flows by it with urban ingredients like modern road bridges, the remnants of industrial buildings and graffiti in a rather stylish way. And there are geese, ducks and at least one grey heron, too.

A family of Egyptian Geese

Urban Goose

Urban Goose doing its yoga

Our Trip Admin has been completed and we have accommodation organised for the next seven days, which is probably a record for planning ahead! The route for the next week or so is a curious one as well, since we make a good number of border crossings, entering first Luxembourg and then Belgium, France, back into Belgium and then back into France again!

Normally during a rest period, M1 would wash the bikes and thoroughly clean and then lubricate their chains. But the apartment is on the second floor and there's nowhere secure to leave the bikes at street level. Consequently, on arrival on Friday, M1 had the job of first carrying all the bags up the stairs whilst M2 guarded the bikes and bags and then carrying each bike up. Hard work, let me tell you! But this also means that to wash the bikes would need M1 to carry the bikes down to street level, work on them on the pavement of a fairly major street, wait for them to dry before lubricating the chains and then carry the bikes back up to the apartment where they would hopefully not drip oil on the floor! No thanks. So, bike care is deferred until the next opportunity which is likely to be at the first campsite after Luxembourg, provided the weather is dry.

We have nothing much planned for the rest of the day. We started watching French police drama (and masterpiece), Spiral ("Engrenages" in French) on the laptop yesterday and so will doubtless binge more episodes. We've seen all seasons before, but it is tres awesome and are already enjoying watching season one again.

And if M2 gets itchy feet, we may go for another walk, elsewhere in Saarbrücken. We shall see.

Bikepacking 2023 - Rest day #1 in Saarbrücken

Day #

20

State of Legs

:-)

---

	Distance (miles)	Distance (km)	Ascent (feet)	Ascent (metres)	Punctures
Today	0 miles	km	0 feet	metres	0
Trip Totals	762.1 miles	km	24010 feet	metres	0

Today's Route

No Cycling Today

Route So Far

---

Travelogue

We're in Saarbrücken, Germany, approaching the end of our third week away and enjoying the first of two consecutive rest days in an AirBnB apartment. 

We walked to a nearby bakery for breakfast this morning and paused to capture a photo of the attractive church at the end of the street.

After breakfast we walked to a supermarket and back and saw a little more of the place. Saarbrücken does have what looks like a nice, pedestrianised older part of the city near us but the area we walked through today, did remind us of Croydon! We'll leave it to you to decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing!

There's even a Primark

Since returning to the apartment, we've focused mostly on Trip Admin. This started with M1 studying the ascent and distance data for the trip so far, something he did on his solo European trip last year. 

It's can be interesting to identify the most challenging sections of the route, spanning several days in a row rather than just looking at individual days. M1 does this by calculating the cumulative distance and ascent in a moving window of three, four and five days. Here are the charts for the three day moving window.

Fascinating, or what? That's a rhetorical question by the way!

Of more genuine interest is the revelation that we are way ahead of schedule. We knew we were a few days ahead, but with 760 miles of an estimated 1200 - 1300 mile route already cycled, we're easily a week ahead of ourselves. So, after planning ahead and identifying accommodation for the next week, including an apartment for a couple of nights in Luxembourg City, we decided that we'd modify our route to head across to the French coast near to Dieppe and join Eurovelo route EV4 which we'd follow north along the coast to Calais.

The original route looked like this:

Whereas the extended remix version looks like this now:

Actually, the route we plan to take home in England differs a little from the route we took on the way out and that's not shown in either of these versions of the route, but that's a mere detail.

That's probably it for today.

Das Ende

Bikepacking 2023 - Mittersheim to Saarbrücken

Day #

19

State of Legs

:-)

---

	Distance (miles)	Distance (km)	Ascent (feet)	Ascent (metres)	Punctures
Today	45.6 miles	km	315 feet	metres	0
Trip Totals	762.1 miles	km	24010 feet	metres	0

Today's Route

Route So Far

---

Travelogue

Once again, it was drizzling when we woke up in our trusty tent this morning, but it soon stopped and after a breakfast of baguette and quince jam, we set off on our bikes to rejoin Eurovelo EV5 by the side of the Sarre Canal.

Almost all of the day's cycling was by the canal. The surface was excellent, it was slightly downhill the whole way so that we positively whizzed along (by our low standards), the temperature was cool, fresh and perfect for cycling.

M1 doing a passable impression of an ape :-)

There were lots of birds to marvel at, the first of which was this Grey Heron, which flew along the canal in front of us for a while.

In fact, it seemed that there were Grey Herons at every turn. We'd never seen so many in one place before.

One of the herons we saw was positioned about 5 metres from an angler, and didn't take its eyes of him the whole time we were there. We can only assume it was hoping for some food, with no or little effort!

Hoping there is such a thing as a free lunch!

As well as the multitude of Grey Herons, we saw a couple of families of swans, which were very cute.

But perhaps best of all, was having not one, but two separate encounters with Kingfishers! In both cases, these spectacular birds, with their brilliant, iridescent blue bodies and orange heads, flew across the path in front of us, only a few metres away. This all happened far too quickly to be able to obtain a photograph of course, but I'm sure it will prove very memorable. M1 knows that he has now had a total of five encounters with Kingfishers; one in the UK earlier this year, one in France on his solo trip last year, one earlier this week in Villers-sur-Meuse, and now two more in one day!

About 10 miles along the route, we suddenly encountered this.....

The EV5 cycle path was blocked due to some kind of maintenance work. There had been no warning signs or diversions in place that we had noticed. Oh dear, what on earth were we to do?! M1 suggested swimming, using panniers as flotation devices on the bikes. M2 thought that a silly idea and suggested instead, that we cycle back the way we had come until we found a way off the path and onto roads and then to figure out our own detour around this obstacle. M1 was slightly disappointed with the conventional nature of this solution, but reluctantly agreed to it.

As always (it seems), this minor problem had a silver lining. We detoured through the town of Sarralbe and in the town's centre found ourselves several sources of coffee. We stopped at one and had cups of coffee, but neither of us were hungry, so there was no PaC or CdA for us today.

We found our way back to EV5 and the canal path and set off again, "whizzing" being our chosen style of cycling.

Very soon, we reached the border with Germany, with the opposite bank of the canal German territory whilst we continued to cycle along the French side of the canal.

Germany is over there (more or less)!

Saarbrücken is a medium sized city which we entered by crossing the river via one of several road bridges. There was quite a lot of traffic on this fairly major road, but the cycle path infrastructure is good, so we were never concerned. 

Our ultimate destination for the day was an AirBnB apartment that we'd booked. We cycled to the address  on Kaiserstraße so that we knew where the apartment was, but since we were more than three hours too early to be able to gain access, we found ourselves a very nice cafe and had a very long and leisurely lunch to kill the time.

When the time came, we settled our bill, jumped back onto our bikes (not literally, we'd had far too much cake for that!) and cycled back in the direction of the apartment on Kaiserstraße. M1 popped into Lidl on the way and bought groceries for the evening.

On arrival at the address on Kaiserstraße, we consulted the AirBnB information about gaining access and hunted for the keypad that was supposed to be there so we could key in the entry code. But there was none to be found! Eventually, M1 started to suspect he had made a horrible, horrible mistake. Could there be more than one Kaiserstraße in Saarbrücken? Google Maps was consulted, just as the old lady who presumably lived at the address we were at, came to the door looking very much unamused by the sight of two British bikepackers trying to find a way into her home! :-)

And sure enough. There was another Kaiserstraße about 2.5 miles away. Reviewing the AirBnB details again confirmed that this was the location of the apartment. Doh!

So, we cycled off once again, this time to the right address, which it has to be said is in a much nicer part of town, so there was a happy ending to this tale.

The apartment is really nice and we're to be here for three nights, giving us two whole days of rest. 

That's it for today!