I’d decided that I’d ride towards the north-east of France and the Vosges Mountains as there is a four-hundred kilometre MTB route that goes south towards Mulhouse. To get to the start should take three or four days, all going well as I head south-east from Luxembourg City by whichever route takes my fancy, mostly sticking to cycle routes that show on my GPS.

I’d only wound my way out of the city following a river for an hour when I stopped to investigate the new rubbing sound that had appeared – in doing so the rack holding my bag to my saddle and off the rear tyre completely failed. In the circumstances, I thought the safest option was to return to the relatively close city and try to find a bike shop that would sell me a suitable rack. If necessary, I could always wait and get one shipped to me. As it happens, only a few hours and some repeat-riding were lost – I now have a more traditional, but only slightly heavier, rack holding my rear bag above the wheel.

Riding the stretch of river for the third time, I finally made it on to the new bridge in the town of Hesperange to read the poignant and tragic tale of the American tank that plunged into the frigid river Boxing Day 1944 while returning in convoy from the Battle of the Bulge. Needless to say, I’ve seen many monuments and read many tales of lives lost in each world war in this part of the world. Mostly about young men far from home in foreign lands – well, those are the ones that tend to be translated into English.

A lot of the riding for the day was through open farmland – where the cycle routes all tend to be paved. There was still a fair amount of climbing to be done, and occasionally a panorama opened up. I flirted with the French border a couple of times, but generally I was heading towards Germany. That which had held such promise previously, but then (I felt) didn’t treat me well at all with all that mud and rain, the GR5, abruptly came back into my path. I ran with it for a little while, it seemed OK, but it didn’t work out again so I continued on my way. Apologies for the laboured metaphor.

The daily heavy rain came during the daily (sometimes twice-daily) bakery stop – so I missed most of it. It turned into wine country very briefly as I approached the Moselle River (the German border in this area) – there was a steep roll downhill to the river & it turned out Schengen was just down the river a bit. I could hardly not visit such a place that is associated with me being to do all this border-crossing (six countries so far, dozens of border-crossings) without once showing my passport. There’s nothing there – I suppose the only thing of note is that it’s at the meeting point of three countries.

In Germany there was a big climb out of the Moselle Valley and I quickly realised that the German cycle networks is wonderfully signed. From a big map-board I worked out that the Saarland-Radweg route would take me roughly the way I wanted to go – & the signs have English translation, so I get to pick up some of the local history/attractions. For the rest of the day it was mostly across farmland and paved – I tried a MTB trail for a while, but it wasn’t really helping me get where I wanted to go and had an annoying number of steps in it. I found too that the villages were pretty much dead in the prevening, so it was some time and with quite a detour that I got to a town big enough to have open restaurants.

With it still not being warm and summery, which might be expected in summer, my thoughts turned to getting to Italy sooner. I’m a little sick of being wet and cold for no particularly good reason – I’ve survived enough English winters MTBing to choose to go somewhere drier! This would mean not heading east towards Munich and doing the TransAlp route I had intended through Austria and finishing at Lake Garda. But it would mean I’d be in a place where I could at least understand a little of what is going on around me and at least be able to converse with those that serve me food (those being the people I have the opportunity to talk to the most, of course). I think I would much prefer that & maybe my Italian would improve.