Bikepacking 2023 - Mittersheim to Saarbrücken

Day #

19

State of Legs

:-)

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	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

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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!