Breisach to Gambsheim

Thursday was the hottest day in Germany all year, I was told. At the end of the day I crossed the river and entered France with a quick genuflection, only to find that it was just as hot there. Many of the banks here have those big posts outside telling the public the date, time and temperature. The one outside Credit Mutuel at 8pm said it was 34 degrees. The one on the other side of the road, not to be outdone, said 44 degrees. Doesn't matter, it was hot by 9am in Breisach and stayed impossibly hot until about 2am the next morning. Let's move on from this.
Something else I've noticed about the German people is that many wear sandals and socks - many Germans and many British Quakers, in fact. Drinking a morning coffee on a lovely cafe terrace in Breisach and reading The Summer Book, I noticed a sort of roaring sound to one side. I saw an elderly gentleman sitting on a plastic chair in his drive taking a blow torch to the weeds growing between the cobbles. The blowtorch wasn't something you'd use on masterchef to finish your creme brulee - this thing was the real deal, it had a separate gas bottle (the sort that patio heaters use). The weeds were catching fire and the flames were licking at the man's feet. Amazingly he was wearing socks and sandals, which is why I'm telling the story. (Please don't do this - get weed killer or pull them out by hand.) Now tell me, what would you do in this situation if you didn't know the German for 'What are you doing? You're going to catch fire.'? What I did was hatch a plan. I thought that if his feet caught fire, I'd grab my cycling water bottle - the sort with the drinking nipple thing on top - and I'd rush over and squirt his feet with it. I'd have to be quick, though, because if he was wearing nylon socks, it could be WHOOF before I could get there. Anyway in the end he seemed to give up and he went inside.
The Summer Book - two lines that struck me to a stop. 1. 'Everything was salvaged, some by the right hands and some by the wrong, but nothing was simply lost.' 2. 'Oh, stuff and nonsense,' Grandmother said. She stopped and turned to face him. 'Just because more and more people do the same stupid things, that nothing to make such a fuss about.'
Back to the journey... Most of Thursday's journey was along the east bank of the river. Here the Rhine has been canalised, which is to say that its course has been altered to run in more or less a straight line and its flow has been controlled so it resembles the contrived tameness of a canal rather than a living river. On either side of the river is a big ugly dike (a dike in this context is an artificial barrier used to contain a body of water). I was riding on top of one of these (oh stop it, will you) on a gravel track pretty much all day. The river becomes very wide, industrial and featureless, the sun was very hot and giving off its harsh midday light. and the gravel track was dusty and made a constant crackling sound, so it was not ideal for cycling. I went fast, pausing only for jelly bears (i.e. to eat them, they're good for energy).
I met another lone cyclist, Marcus, who'd ridden from the source of the river and was heading for Koln as fast as he could. He's a big guy on quite a small bike and he was sweating quite a lot. His big red beard probably had an unfortunate insulating effect, too. In fact, he looked quite a lot like a viking on a bicycle - a biking viking. We rode side-by-side for a while - about 20 miles - and passed the time of day. I wasn't sure if I was going too fast or too slow for him - I worried about this - but never mind. We had a drink at a bar and he told me that further downstream a mermaid would sing to me from a hill and cause me to fall in love and crash. I'm looking forward to it already. It comes at kilometer marker 524, he said. I think (the river has markers every kilometer). All Germans know about it. We talked about being European. The Rhine is a good place to be a European these days. On the French side, they speak French and sell Pains au Chocolat in their bakeries, on the German side they speak German and sell Apfel Strudel-type things in their bakeries (all good cycling food). They use the same money, have no border controls, and are very glad that thanks to European integration it would be very difficult for the two countries to have yet another war. Marcus says he feels like a European. He feels good on either side of the river, and doesn't think that one side's better than the other, and why would he? And why is the UK not using the Euro yet? There are lots of reasons given but I think it comes down to this: we think we're a bit better than everyone else because we're not foreign and we had an empire once. We don't all think that but our most popular newspaper after the tabloids is the Daily Mail. I think that European understanding was advanced by a small amount through the serendipitous meeting of Marcus and me. He was on a crazy schedule - so were the vikings in yesteryear - and he burned on up the crackling dike track while I took a left into France.
The campsite was one of the municipal ones so cost almost nothing and as it was positioned around a lido was jam-packed with families. It was a lively place - lots of howling happy young people. I washed the salt, dust and insects out of my clothes in a sink and hung them on Raquel to dry. She didn't mind, she's an inanimate object, but don't let her hear you say so. At 2 in the morning there was thunder and lightnings so I had to leap up and get everything in.
I have to type all this into the numeric keypad of my mobile phone so it takes a long time and today I'm rushing so I don't have to go back to the campsite in the dark. Cheerio. The picture is feet-dipping in the river...