We had breakfast at our motel and then cycled up to the supermarket in the town centre to stock up on snacks for the day and emergency dinner.
At 10.30 we were on the road, heading back towards the canal. We returned to the traffic-free cycle path alongside it at Harskirchen after about 4km.
The clouds hadn't cleared during the night and the weather was varying between a drizzle and light rain. The canal meandered very much like yesterday and we reached Mittersheim on the shore of the like-named lake after about one hour.
We had already passed a number of locks on the canal today and they were becoming ever more frequent. A café next to the second lock in Mittersheim beckoned for a second breakfast or early lunch, but there was no food on offer so we just had some coffee and left after a brief 20 min break.
Just after Mittersheim the canal crosses several side arms of the Grand Étang de Mittersheim, providing unique views of cycling alongside water on top of more water. Several kilometres further on we crossed Les Trois Ponts where the canal cuts across lake Stockweyer.
We were soon passing along the shore of Étang de Gondrexange and reached the eponymous town at 2 o'clock.
We quickly toured the centre which was completely deserted and lifeless without any opportunity for lunch or even a snack. Luckily we had spotted a roadhouse or boathouse on the way in which was situated on the shore of the lake a small distance from the town itself. We found it to be open and containing a small shop and a restaurant, although the kitchen was currently closed. We had some sandwiches and coffee and stayed for about 70 minutes to get warm.
The only other customer in the shop was a very kind lady who offered to host us for the night, but we still intended to cover some distance today so had to decline.
It was nearly 3.30 when we left Gondrexange and we had phoned ahead to a very nice looking hostel called Auberge de Mayakafer that Lisa had found online, but which was still 30km ahead along the cycle path.
While we had been going roughly south since the start of our tour in Saarbrücken, our course turned east from this point and followed the Canal de la Marne au Rhin. The cycle path so far had been almost perfectly level except for the regular ramps alongside each of the locks. Unfortunately for Lisa, the path along the Canal de la Marne au Rhin followed the canal much less closely and was therefore noticeably more hilly.
Just after Niederviller, the canal disappears underneath a mountain and emerges again from a tunnel on the other side while the cyclists are required to go over the top.
The same happens at Arzviller from where the cycle path follows the Ancien Canal de la Marne au Rhin which becomes the beautiful Valle d'Ecluses, the »valley of the locks«. There are locks every few hundred metres, each with nice little lock-keepers' cottages that have been converted into picturesque homes.
The rain had stopped in the meantime, but it was only after another 3.5h of continuous cycling that we reached our Mayakafer hostel for the night, shortly before 7 o'clock. Today we had cycled 70km, most of them wet.
The hostel provided a very warm and welcoming atmosphere while having a distinctive, decidedly quirky style. We were offered a warm dinner by our friendly host who prepared a vegetarian meal for Lisa although it was obvious that this was a slightly unusual request.
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