EuroVelo 6 - Day 18 - Rainy Days and Mondays Don't Always Get Me Down!!👌

 Mohlin (beyond Basel) to Shaffhausen 108 km 65  miles

Well, Paul's support skills paid big dividends yet again. Late yesterday afternoon he investigated the weather forecast.... on a bright warm blue skyed day.... why would he do that?? But he did, and raised the alarm on incoming weather at 3am and throughout today..... and probably tomorrow too!! So we got all our gear that we could stowed safely out of harm's way, and onto our now trusty steeds so the morning's departure could be a military style slick event.... which of course it was!! En route by 0745 in light of the rains!! Bravo Paul, keep up the great work!

We rolled out on Rheinweg wanderwegs! Running alongside the Rhein through mature forest that gave us some respite from the wind & rains!

Eventually at 20+km we found a café to get some nosh for breakfast.... croissants stuffed with 1)chocolate, and 2)apple&cinnamon, washed down with two good strong 💪💪cups of coffee.... but what a price, over €30 for 4 cups and 4 croissants... Had a call with the Branksome Boys on their Monday  ride, and Paul spoke to his French Canal Boat crowd.... soon done, rain letting up and off we go to the next feeding station!!

The next break was for a timely timed lunch, so capability of farm sprinklers!! !!  good stuff was available! We shared a roast chicken for lunch with a baguette, so well fixed for the afternoon!! On we rode and soon the rain relented and jackets and rain hats could be removed!!

We climbed over 600m and almost ended up in a quarry, but away before the precipitous drop down into the pit!! Before you come up with any conclusions, albeit fully justifiable, the gravel quarry part of the day was a joint decision.... both going towards it, and legging it as soon as we recognised the magnitude of it! 🤣👍

Some great scenery in Switzerland as you'd expect. Tolling bells in villages and the Rheinfall water fall was indeed the highlight of the day!! Great gravel paths way off the besten track meant we had peace and traquility most all of the day...... except when we didn't, and that was kinda crap.... busy roads for 20km of today with spray throwing sprinklers!! Bot advisable for pregnant ladies, small children, or anyone of a nervous disposition!🤣👍

Killer long day at 65miles in the rain all morning, and over 600m of climbing..... no mean feat with our loads!! But temperatures very good and with the early start and a big day yesterday we have effectively clawed back a day on the schedule by doing 3 days work in two good sized days, and one tiddler of less than 20km tomorrow!! We considered going on it was getting late and with discretion being the better part of valour we retired straight after the Shaffhausen Falls!

TTFN

Doug&Paul😎🤙

EuroVelo 6 - Fair Wear and Tear??

The kit Paul and I used suffered varying degrees of wear and tear. The bikes were both fabulous, and apart from never getting properly cleaned so that they were filthy dirty by the end, we suffered no punctures, no chain breakages, no drive train problems, or any other routine maladies.

Of course I had my rack problems for the first three weeks owing to my change of bike from my gravel to my Mountain Bike with just a month to go. Once I fitted the new Ortlieb rack that bother was permanently extinguished! Paul's bike was faultless from beginning to end apart from some rather annoying noises and rattles coming from the pedals and bottom bracket during the last few days!!

Doug's Scott Scale with 2¾" Tubeless Tyres

Maintenance kit bags on cross bar and tent bag coming out from seat tube.

Rear view, extra heavy load with 3l red wine box!

2 panniers and my motorcycle bag at the back

Handlebar Bag and 2 Fork bags up front

Paul, sensibly being more minimalistic has several bags less than me! No wonder he could leave so early in the mornings!

That orange coat made Paul very visible to all!

The machines done good, and the bikes did well too!!🤣🤙

Clothing wise the story was not quite so positive! After nearly 3,000miles my cycling apparel was pretty shot..... not necessarily because of the rigours of the ride, primarily because the gear I brought, although fully servicable, was near the end of it's life before the journey (if truth be known that gear ought to have been thrown away some time ago!), and thus was totally knackered by the end of it! Our Black Sea arrival saw a massive disgardment of old and shot cycling gear;

My proudest example of knackered kit is my shoes! 

They were probably 4 years old and the soles were going anyhow, but this trip has exposed both shoes metal shanks, as the rubber vibram soles has been chewed away by the pedals! OMG!! #gotmymoneysworth

Gloves also were several years old before this trip, which has well and truly seen them off!

This is what happens when a sleeve gets drawn into the disc brake assembly... 

Only wore these trousers a very few times on the whole trip... once to bed whilst camping in Serbia at +1°C at 9pm, then the next day as it was too chilly for bare legs in the Carpathian/Balkan mountain river section! My thrifty ancestral heritage truly shines thru with this artefact!

Bungees stretched to ultimately failure the minute I didn't need them again!!

RipTorn Team Shirt chucked out

Handle grips fully worn through from hanging on for grim death whilst playing 'chicken' with the 18Wheelers!

Another example of way overused kit. These overshoes got used several times early on in the rain and mud phases. Latterly, as we enjoyed such splendid weather, they must not have been used during the second half of the trip at all!!

Off they went!

The accumulated 'junk'! Thrown away all together! c. 5litres of useless stuff!

My strategy of using 'nearly worn out' gear served me well as it allowed me to return home with....

A bottle of wine and small gifts for Maria!

The Sloe Moonshine made from Croatian Plum Schnapps, and Romanian Sloes!

A supply of good coffee from our favourite Constanța Café!

....and Marius' wife's Strawberry Jam!!🥰

Thanks for following us.....

Until our next Adventure, we bid you farewell!

Blog now closed, it's been real!! 

✊😎🤝😎🤙

Doug & Paul

Epilogue Day 60+ - Doug's Thoughts

Special Thanks!

First and foremost, special thanks must go to our dear wives Maria and Deborah for accepting the worry and uncertainty of such an adventure. Be it for such a good cause as it was, or otherwise. This trip always had risks associated with it that neither Paul or I ever failed to recognise, but we always worked closely as a team to mitigate those risks wherever we possibly could.

Secondly, thanks to our children who are all old enough to also understand the risks of such a trip, but trust their Dad's to always do the right thing!

Thirdly, thanks goes to my great friend Paul, who follows in the footsteps of a few other good men who have made big rides easier for me than they otherwise would have been! You too Paul, brought enough to the table to make this whole thing possible. Quiet tenacity, trust, common sense in continuously reviewing of our plans, and eagle-eyedness, and of course Cheffing skills bar none! Only through team work, hard graft, good sense and sense of humour, and proper nutrition can epic rides be completed and you contributed to the lot! Cheers my friend!

Lastly, but far from least all those wonderful people who have shown such interest in our adventure and sponsored our MND/ALS causes to the amounts of...... 

Canada  - $1,100

The USA - $1,200

The UK   - £5,000 + GiftAid

..........to the 31st of October, 2023

Facts and Figures

Total Days Away  - 63 days

Days Rest               - 6 full and 3 half days

Miles Cycled          - 2,900miles (4,700kms)

Elevation Gained - c 50,000 (15,400m)

Countries Covered

The UK - Doug 1 day

France - Doug  17 days  Paul 14 days

Switzerland - 3 days

Germany - 11 days

Austria    -  4 days

Slovakia  - 2 days

Hungary  - 7 days

Croatia     - 2 days

Serbia      -  5 days

Bulgaria   - 2 days

Romania  - 9 days

Epilogue - Paul's Thoughts

You could say, spending several months day and night in the company of one person who you might previously have seen on a casual weekly basis, should give.you a good insight into their character..... Nothing quite prepared me for the force of nature that Doug Ramsay truly is!

I've known Doug for about seven years now. I first met him, his wife Maria, and eldest daughter Fiona briefly at my nephew's (and their next door neighbours daughter's wedding).

Two years later we moved to Bournemouth and still having Doug's phone number from our chance introduction,we met, all lycred up, at the pier and he then introduced me to a group of 'middle aged' cyclists . We have since met up, on and off, twice a week to partake of that sport that so endears us to the steel encased four wheeled users of the highway!

Some few years later (and probably after a few pints of Doug's homemade beer ) a trip across Europe's Eurovelo 6 route was mooted (but I quite remember by whom!), and a couple of years after that (about a year ago) a date was fixed in the diary for September 1st 2023. Having fixed the date we immediately swung into action. Or at least one of us did. I promptly forgot all about it.

Doug thankfully set too with a vengeance. You might  just get an inkling at this point how the rest of this story unfolds.
From April to October for the past six years my wife Deb and I live and travel the European inland waterways on our Dutch Barge, a steel cruiser. This year my only worry was where to moor the boat for winter so as to be as near as possible to the start point (St. Nazaire) of EV6, and how I was going to cope with forfeiting two months of my comfortable floating existence for two of undoubted hardship of an unimaginable kind. I have to say this did give me a couple of sleepless nights, but after a giving myself a stiff talking too, I managed to forget all about this too.

Doug meanwhile  got stuck in! Garmin and Strava (not an American pop duo!) were heavily involved and after many hours of dedicated planning Doug came up with a daily route plan, complete with pre e mailed campsites for every night. Kit lists soon followed with every imaginable bike trip requirements itemised. "Blimey, we're going to need an articulated truck for all this lot!", I thought.

So we met at the start point at St. Nazaire. Doug had just cycled the 325 kms from home to get there (nothing like a gentle warm up ride before the main event!), whilst I sat on a perfectly comfortable train seat which whisked me and my heavily laden bike to our rendezvous point, on the other side of a very scary bridge!!

Day one we set off,  it rained. Heavily. All day! "Let's get this done", I thought, misery levels were escalating off the scale. Head down, I kept pedaling. All the while thinking, how soon can we stop for a three hour coffee break??!!

Doug , on the other hand was like an otter on wheels. Gliding along the pathways , playfully splashing through puddles, rain streaking off his unconcerned body. This man's in seventh heaven I thought. What HAVE I let myself in for?

The answer was manifold. Someone who revels in the outdoors, who will take every opportunity to explore his environment both physically and socially, who will instigate conversations with strangers whatever the situation, who is seemingly immune to hardship, who talks to cats,  who is caring and thoughtful of others, is in short an ideal friend to spend a couple of months with!

Doug, what a great trip, and thanks for making it so much easier for me!

With our Bournemouth Team completing EV6!

EuroVelo 6 - Days 57 to 59 - The Eagles Have Landed

 Constanța Romania Cycle 8km 5mi and Walking 12km 7mi

First things first, get rid of the bikes!! Paul spoke with Marius yesterday to make inquiries about bike preparation for flying. All seemed OK with this option so we rode over to his bike shop as early as we could. We were happy with his ability to basically do everything from dismantlement to packing them up, thus making yesterday's box redundant!! C'est la vie, this made things just too easy!! So we rushed back to our digs to make all the necessary packing arrangements for onward travel. We were back with Marius by 2pm to seal the deal, and most importantly get our bikes dispatched!! We were then free to begin sightseeing our final 'Port of Call'! 

Til now Constanța had struck us as somewhat of an uninteresting port city, but how wrong we were! Over that afternoon, and the next 2 days until our departure it slowly revealed itself as not only a lively holiday destination in Eastern Europe, but also a center of trade, and shipping with an enormous Black Sea Port, the epicenter of oodles of Greco-Roman archaeological activity, and a place to garner considerable knowledge about Romania's recent past over the last 150 years of subjugation under Ottoman rule, fascist leaderships, USSR Soviet influenced Communism up until the upheavals of 1989, and the demise of the Soviet ideological machine. As usual, the more I learn, the more I realise just how little I know.... very little indeed. So, one of my projects is to begin a history lesson on this part of the world, from antiquity to the present day. Speaking to a young man in the museum exhibit about Nicolai Ceausescu helped illuminate his treatment of his 'political prisoners' who contributed to the construction of a canal in the 1960's. They worked on the canal until they died, nearly 1000 so called 'dissenters' to Ceausescu's leadership perished simply for speaking their views about his ambitions, and Modus Operandi, or less.

As evil a leader as any of his contemporaries like Hitler or Pol Pot! Lest we forget!

The Greco-Roman archaeological legacy is significant in this region, and we've cycled past, and directly through much of it! Amphora Galora, funerary rituals, statues, coins, architectural finds show this area was an extremely active part of all the most significant empires over the last 2000 years!

The Old Town of Constanța shows all the attributes of such influences with not only Orthodox Churches, but fabulous Islamic Mosques, and neo-Romanian architecture aplomb! 

We walked past a Greek Orthodox Church at one point that was wide open for all to enter, which of course we did, and we could watch over a tribute to a group of Greek WW2 War heroes. So many of the churches in eastern Europe are small intimate places with varying degrees of elaborate decor. Undoubtedly, faith plays a big role in the lives of these people.

Thankfully for us, bakeries and small shops also remain open and welcoming for us 'Ultra New Age Travellers'!

We discovered the beaches, old port for small vessels, and part of the old town on our first afternoon walkabout, then the main old town park and the bulk of the Old Town on our second day. It was our impression that work was definitely underway on numerous Old Town properties to restore and upgrade many of the old buildings to their original splendor! It'll probably take 10 or 20 years, but I for one would love to return here in 5 to 10 years to see the degree of progress! Without doubt the main seafront area is delightful, the work done there on civic buildings, the casino, lighthouse and promenade is most appealing indeed!

Paul and I took the easy route for dinner number 2 in Constanța and we agreed pizza and beer was necessary.

We hoped to watch the Rugby final, but it wasn't being televised as was the England game for their 3rd place bronze. Such is life, so off to sleep by 10pm for a busy day of getting home tomorrow!

Until I woke up it was unclear if we'd gain an extra hour in Romania or not? Thankfully we did, so I could get some blogging done, some swimming done, and the final packing done!

Marius arrived on time but he'd failed to recognise the clock change until this morning as well. We got to the airport in good time and exchanged gifts with Marius.... we gave him our unused camping gas, and he (more like his wife), gave us a jar of homemade strawberry jam!! Just another shining example of Romanian kindness and generosity!! 

On the way to my swim I met a complete stranger who greeted me as an old friend, inquired about myself and proceeded to show me an unusual degree of respect as a total stranger. It seems to be their way here in Romantic Romania. Most of the country is basic to the eye, but to the soul it is as incredible as any place I've ever visited. 

I will hope to return to Romania in the next year or two to visit Bucharest, and the Carpathian Mountain carpeted region of Transylvania with my wife, Maria. So many people have told us just how special these places are! 

Being a person who has often over indulged in taking time to talk to strangers, even to the point getting criticised for it, I now realise in many parts of the world that this is a great characteristic engendering peace, trust, respect and harmony with others. So, long may this seemingly unique nature remain beyond our shores.

Bless you all for your wonderful support for our charitable causes across Canada, The USA, and The UK in support of MND Motor Neurone Disease, aka ALS Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis research and care. Also for your moral support for Paul&I on the demanding physical and mental.challenges associated with this ride!

Best Wishes,

Doug&Paul