eleanor.scot

A very flat route today along the Rhine valley, and crossing international borders three times.      First stop was an old church in Fläsch which has a colony of mouse-eared bats nesting in its roof. They have set up an infra-red camera with a screen outside but we couldn’t get the live feed to work. A video of the bats from earlier worked just fine, though. They are very cute!

We were cycling along the section of the Rhine which forms the border between Switzerland and Liechtenstein this morning and early afternoon. Further north, the Rhine forms the border between Switzerland and Austria, and we mostly did this on the Austrian side, as the combination of a headwind and a gravel path on the Swiss side was not ideal. 

For most of the day, though, we had excellent paths. We have seen this model on the Danube and the Elbe – dyke for flood prevention by the side of the river with a good cycle path along the top. We were very spoiled by all that lovely, smooth tarmac so suddenly being back on gravel was a shock. It was probably only for a short distance but there was a convenient bridge and more tarmac just over the border. 

Since we have visited Liechtenstein before, we only swung through it briefly and pressed on to Buchs back in Switzerland. Jane, if you are reading this, I think it was a town named just for you!

We are now in Bregenz, but have failed to book ahead to get tickets for their open air, lakeside production of Carmen at the summer festival. Maybe another year (looks to be Rigoletto next year from the posters). Suddenly back in the land of the Euro, although the Austrian dialect here is not any easier for me than Swiss German. 

Tomorrow we press on round the north side of Lake Constance, which is the alternative and slightly longer route – but we did most of the south side on a trip in 2014, and there are interesting places to visit and the prospect of a short ferry trip across the lake to Konstanz.