Lyon -> Germany in 2 Days

Lyon -> Germany in 2 Days

It’s been quite some time since my trip to Barcelona in October and I became quite motivated to do something else even though it’s still not very warm in February. I wanted to visit my family and some friends in Germany so a perfect occasion to do some riding.

The idea was to leave Lyon to the north going up and slightly east until the Doubs river. Then Besancon and take a hotel in Montbeliard (after a bit more than 300km)
Then the next morning I would continue until Strasbourg, cross over the Rhine and finally arrive in Karlsruhe. That was the plan anyway.

I started at 8h in the morning, having delayed my trip already by one week with still some parts of a cold infection that I carried around for the last 2 weeks, so not the best preconditions ๐Ÿ˜€

First video after 1h on the road (bad microphone quality)

Cycling went very smooth the first hours as the wind was rather favorable.

Just short update on the good speeds and wind.
Pretty fields in the middle of nowhere

At 11h30 I had done the first 100km and wanted to do a short break in a village, but the bakery was small and had neither coffee nor tea, so I just had a short cold break on a bench outside, moral started to go down fast.

Not so euphoric anymore ๐Ÿ˜‰
Sorry for not realizing I was speaking french

When I was stopping my coughin started to come back rather fast so I decided to stay on the bike for the next hours, which maybe isn’t the smartest move ever made.

after 130km
At the river Doubs

At 17h I finally arrived at the Doubs river, which is part of the Eurovelo 6 cycle way I did 5 years ago. It is very beautiful but my mistake was that I did only 2 short breaks of 5 minutes since the morning at 8h. I was looking forward to the first warm meal at a Quick in Besancon which was a big feast with maxi menu and a milkshake. It felt so good to warm up a bit, but I had still 80km to go and when I left it was already night.

In the night

I won’t lie, it became rather cold, even snowing and I was already quite tired but still able to cycle rather well. The only reason I was still riding was because I had to get to this damn hotel. Luckily I also didn’t remember that most of the hills where on this last 80km.

Lucky for me, 24h check in

I arrived tired but proud to have cycled over the 300km line around midnight in Montbeliard, had the best hottest shower of my life and fell asleep.

tired?

Well, it was gruesome to start riding again, I had a lot of saddle sores and should have definitely taken a cream for my bottom (let’s not get into detail). The fact that I couldn’t really sit on my saddle anymore put a lot of stress on my knee which eventually started hurting more than I liked.

First thought of taking a shortcut to Germany and train
You can see my pain face ๐Ÿ˜‰
Perfect weather and cycle way

It was so sad, I was cycling on a super beautiful cycle road in perfect weather and every pedal stroke was very painful, advancing very slow I made more and more stops for stretching but nothing helped (except painkillers which I never wanna use)
The goal was now just to go via Mulhouse to the closest german train station across the Rhine which was not so far but seemed much more difficult than the day before.

Germany!!!

I finally arrived in Germany where I could take a train that brought me 150km north to Karlsruhe. I would have really like to go until the end on bike but this time it was not possible. I’m super happy though about the experiences I made the day before and ready to take everything I learned from it to have a more sustainable ultra distance ride soon.

PS: I was ill all weekend but was still fun ๐Ÿ˜€

Thanks to my bike and legs/body and sorry for torturing you both.

I will write soon some reflections on what I think I made wrong and how to take better care of my body in order to do longer multi day trips.

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