Wangenbourg-Engenthal to Selestat

Another Glorious day of riding!!

And I ticked over 1000 Ks of riding today!

I was up early and down for breakfast at 7:30, it was a good spread albeit fairly standard. I had another crack at boiling an egg but after 11 min it was still quite runny. I quickly packed, paid and left at 8:35. Not too bad for this tour.

The first event of the day was Col des Pandours, WooHoo, the nice thing was that at 662m it warmed me up nicely. I’d been a bit concerned about the road as it looked a bit bigger than others on the IGN map but there was no one around, so very pleasant. On the decent I noticed quite a few cyclists slogging their way up. It was much easier from my side, I started higher J It was also very cold on the way down, I had to wear my Gortex jacket!

I had a great descent down into the Rhine valley where I joined the Alsace Wine Bike Route. It’s a really nice route, reasonably well sign posted for a bike route. There are lots of lovely villages, churches and(!) the shops were open. There were lots of places to try wine, but I didn’t want to with all of the riding ahead. I tried stopping at a few churches but they are all fairly bland inside. I guess their roofs were blown up in WWII and just replaced with white washed ceilings. Several of the churches are part of a distributed art show; one of the artists is a Taiwanese Nun, but most of the art didn’t appeal to me.

I made great time (yes that is a Paris-Brest above!), it was lovely cycling and hot as well, and got in around 2:15, something of a record I think. I checked out the Tour, showered, washed clothes and then went across the road to  l’Eclerc and bought too much to eat. But ate it anyway J I then watched the tour, there was a great attack from Aru who got Yellow and Romain Bardet pipped him at the post to get the stage. Froome lost 20 seconds! I think they left the attack until too late, they might have got more time on Froome if they’d tried earlier.

I then walked into town. While it may be a tourist town there isn’t much open, after a nice walk and an ice cream I went back to the super market across the road and got some more to eat, not so much this time J

I ate that and then looked for accommodation in Mulhouse. It was such a nice ride today it seems a waste to skip past the next section. Once booked I read some more and slept very early, 10:30 pm!