After our usual ‘stuff ourselves to the brim’ breakfast we hit the road. I took my strongest hayfever meds and didn’t suffer too badly in the morning. At about 12pm we cycled through Landeck, a larger town than any we’d seen so far.
We cycled past Jane and Rutherford, who stopped for a chat and said they’d just been to a chemist! So I went in and bought two replacement bottles of nasal spray and two bottles of eye drops, which now brings my total quantity of hay fever meds to seven.
We stopped at a cafe for a drink which turned out to be more like a dessert – a very ice cream heavy iced chocolate and iced coffee. They came with three long wafers to scoop up the icecream. Delicious!
Heading out of Landeck was a bit of road riding, then gravel, then a lovely tarmac bike path.
Not far out of Landeck we saw this interesting ruin. Imagine living up there! You certainly wouldn’t be popular with the postman.
Lots of horses around, particularly palominos.
We stopped in a little village to refill our soft water bottles and found this curious religious statue. Is it Mary or Eve? Or is this a commentary on how all the women in the bible are either mothers or of ill repute?
A little further along we decided to stop at what looked like a charming little cafe.
It seemed small but was like the tardis as we went in.
Hundreds of seats and a dozen different shops. From the other side it was clearly a Highway service station. We ended up buying ice cream and sitting outside. Coconut for me, caramel for Luke.
The day’s ride was pretty easy compared to the previous days and, apart from a wrong turn down an extremely low and creepy (probably haunted) tunnel, we made it to our hotel without too many worries.
So many cobwebs!No fun!
The path was a lot easier in every way and so we made pretty good time, arriving around 3pm.
Time for a drink at the restaurant.
Most of our discussion over drinks revolved around the excessive number of flies in Switzerland and Austria and the complete lack of flyscreens. No matter where you sit they are landing on your plate and no one else seems terribly bothered by them.
We ended up having dinner at 6, knudels (mac and cheese) and salad for me, cordon Bleu and chips for Luke. mine had dried caramelised onions on top, which I will have to try at home because it was a great combo.
Prices continue to become more reasonable the further we get from St Moritz
I’d like to say we went out partying but I was asleep by 7pm and didn’t wake up until after 5am. I think the relief of having enough medication to make the trip enjoyable was such a great weight of my mind I could properly relax.
Our room at the hotel was nice too, spacious with a balcony lined with purple petunias.
Roomy!Mountain views
Poor Luke was up until 11 playing games with his headphones in.
We left the hotel at about 10 after a bit of drama with my phone and Three, the company I got my phone SIM from. Danny, my friend in Northern Ireland (with whom I did the Camino) had been very kindly helping me out with renewing my phone plan (the money has to be paid from a UK account) but the credit he’d added had somehow disappeared while I’d been asleep – Luke thought maybe the hotel wifi had dropped out and apps had been updating. Luke used their online chat to fix it and the company renewed the plan for a month with unlimited data.
You just don’t realise how important internet access is until you don’t have it. We only have one UK phone number between us and it’s on my phone – something to rectify for next time. The delay made me feel a bit anxious as this was our longest day of cycling yet.
On the way out of Scuol was a very scenic bridge and no cars allowed, which makes any path more pleasant to ride!
So picturesque.
Snow melt makes the rivers such an unusual colour with all the minerals washed down from the mountains.
I didn’t take a lot of photos today. Switzerland has experienced really bad storms and some landslides. Trails that were probably fairly smooth a couple of weeks ago were very potholed and rough. Or maybe they were always like that. The day before we had been detoured due to a big landslide.
The longest covered bridge yet.
There were several parts of the ride early on where railings seemed to be missing or edges were more precipitous than they should be. I really don’t like coming down steep and winding gravel roads that have a sharp turn at the bottom and no railing or fence. It made me very tense and I’m surprised, after so much white-knuckled riding today that my arms and shoulders aren’t sore.
The other thing that was making me worried was that my most powerful and fast-acting hayfever medication is getting very low as the bottle has leaked a bit. I’d tried taking it in two half doses the day before with middling success but today I thought I’d wait until I felt the symptoms before I took it. With the wind in my face and a great deal of pollen in the air it didn’t take long for my eyes to become extremely itchy and feel swollen.
We stopped in a tiny hamlet and I felt really overwhelmed by the terrain and how my face felt. It was hard to see with such itchy red eyes and I had a bit of a cry. Luke tried calling the Eurobike help line to see if the bag transport vehicle was anywhere near us. It took them half an hour to get back to us and then they said no, the driver’s van was too full to pick us up.
We had deliberately booked through a company called Natural Adventures in order to avoid Eurobikes as their reviews weren’t good. It turned out that Natural Adventures use Eurobikes anyhow and that their promises of support to riders did not extend to picking us up, knowing anything about local transport services, connecting us to taxis etc or offering any help whatsoever.
After being the very definition of useless, the person at the other end had the temerity to say ‘have a nice day,’ and I replied with ‘unlikely,’ and hung up in a rage.
Since there was nothing for it, I took some of the remaining fast-acting hayfever meds, waited a bit and then kept going.
The next part of the path was pretty dreadful (short, steep, very rocky climbs and narrow paths next to steep edges) but eventually became a decent road which then turned into us riding on the side of a highway.
Initially we were on a bike path next to the highway but after some roadworks the bike lane disappeared and it was just us and cars and trucks all using the same lane. Fortunately due to the roadworks the traffic was slow and Swiss/Austrian drivers all moved over and were very polite. I didn’t feel in any danger and there were other cyclists on the road.
We had to ride through several tunnels. Partway through one I could see what I initially thought was my hair curling around the front of my hat, which was weird because I had put my hair in braids that morning. No, it dawned on me, it wasn’t hair, it was the legs of a huge beetle reaching under the brim of my hat right in front of my face. It was big enough for me to hear the thump as it hit the road when I brushed it off. Ick.
The highway riding was very fast (for us) – we rode between 30 and 40 kph for quite a while and made up for all the time wasted by the call to Eurobikes (world’s worst bike company?). After the highway the rest of the ride was along pretty quiet and well-sealed country roads through small villages until we reached our hotel.
Today’s ride was about 50km. Tomorrow is more like 35km and hopefully the high quality roads continue as we get closer to Innsbruck. The final day is 65km but if my hayfever is worse there’s a train line along that stretch so we can cut some of it out if needed.
Luke has been really supportive and kind about all my suffering and lets me set the pace and take rests when I need them. Technically I guess this is our honeymoon holiday since we’re on our own for a stretch and, even though it hasn’t been perfect, having Luke be so considerate with my challenges and severe discomfort at points has really reminded me what a wonderful human being he is and how lucky I am to have him.
Our hotel for the evening was on a busy road and didn’t look super fancy but the staff were really lovely and our room was a good size as well as having an enclosed balcony.
We ate dinner in the hotel restaurant, where the food was easily half the price it would’ve been in St Moritz. We had pork schnitzels with cranberry sauce (a great combination) and they served wine in a 240ml carafe for 6€, which cheered me up even more.
Switzerland take note!
We finished the evening drinking our duty free gin and watching from our balcony as the clouds changed colour and listening to music inspired by the restaurant’s playlist of 20 year old trance classics.
Here Comes The Planet 