DEVILISH DEVIATIONS May 24, 2011

May 24, 2011 50.4 km


Don has been running into some trouble with
Trixie, his GPS. He very thoroughly plans our daily routes on the computer and then downloads the route into Trixie. Of course, Trixie thinks she knows best, so every morning when we set out she immediately reroutes us. This frustrates Don no end.

So, for this leg Don decided to fix Trixie’s know-it-all rerouting approach by marking many waypoints so she couldn’t change his route.

After a good breakfast at the B&B Hotel buffet we set out on the next leg of our trip and immediately ran into route problems. Trixie led us off, down a potholed road, which became gravel and didn’t look very hopeful. We got to the river and came upon a big gate stretched across the trail. There were no Interdit signs, so we detached the trailers and shimmied around one end of the gate.

On we went along the gravel path and as I rounded the corner I saw Don pacing back and forth along the levee, grumbling and staring at his GPS. Where is the bridge across the canal? There was supposed to be a bridge right there. Well we could see the bridge foundations, however the bridge went missing 20 years ago. Thank you Garmin. Never trust the latest version Garmin MapSource.





So, we continued along the dirt path and eventually came to another gate to get around, but we finally did find a bridge and lo and behold, we were back on the official bike route.

All went well for several miles until we came to a yellow sign--deviation. We looked down the bike trail and it looked clear and in good condition, and the sign was off to the side, so maybe it wasn’t in effect today. We continued along the bike path.

After a few miles we began to see cranes and big trucks and I was hoping they were across the canal at the plant there. Well, no luck, there was a sign with pictures of pedestrians and cyclists with a circle and a big red slash., Just the same, we wheeled out bicycles and trailers into the hardhat area, detached the trailers to get around a piece of equipment, and we were back on good cycle path., None of the workers yelled at us, and one nice guy even picked up my trailer, weighing at least 50 pounds, and lifted it over the barrier for me.
















The trail was very nice for several miles, but then we crossed another bridge and oops, another big fence, another deviation, onto the busy highway for several miles.

We went through the very nice town of Yutz, where we stopped at the BNP. Yutz isn’t so yutzy. It is a lovely suburban settlement, with lots of big, fancy houses in subdivisions. The town is much bigger that I expected and seemed busy and prosperous.

We moved on along the river, with good bicycle path now. The river gets wider with every mile, first a hundred feet across, then two hundred, and now several hundred feet across. We are getting close to the border with Germany now.

We planned to stay in Sirck-les-Bain and stopped at the Tourist Information to get help with the arrangements. Although this seems to be a pretty big town, the unhelpful Tourist center informed us there were no chambres or hotels in the town. They finally booked us a zimmer over the border in Schengen. The bike path disappeared, so we had to ride the busy highway about 5 miles, up and down hills, to get to our lodging. No answer at the door, but Don went around the back and found a guy working on cars there. He was helpful and spoke pretty good English. This turned out to be JJ (for Jean-Jaques), our host,

After getting settled in our room, and paying the bill up front (the guy seems rather suspicious of his clients), Don did laundry and we showered, then we walked over to the nearby Lidl to pick up some groceries. We have a nice little kichen available to us, so we decided to make some salad and have a pizza for dinner. Breakfast was 10 euro, about $15 each, so we picked up some milk, OJ, croissants and bread and jelly too.

After dinner Don worked on his photos and I was playing Hearts. I was so tired I fell asleep right there at the kitchen table, game half finished and mouse in my hand. I hit the sack around 9pm and slept very well until about 3am. Then I listened to my audio book for awhile before getting the computer out and working on my reports.

Todays route