Following a spell of some bright and sunny weather in February things have now taken a turn for the worse here in the southern half of Germany with several storms following one after the other. Unlike RabH, I'm a fair weather rider so anything approaching cold, wet and windy you'll find my confined to Barracks so to speak.
However, a short while back someone in a similar position posted some images from past rides and thinking that many on the forum are living outside of Europe thought I'd post some images from 2016/2017.
Owning a Caravan many of our breaks/holidays are spent camping but sadly as a result of the type of caravan that we own are unable to transport two relatively heavy e-bikes and so usually rent at our destination. Often the availability of e-bikes is restricted and so several times we end up renting muscle powered bikes as was the case when in the above years we camped on the west coast (Atlantic) side of France.
The island of
Ile de Re is situated a short distance off the coast and is connected to the mainland at
La Rochelle by a bridge 2.9km (1.8 miles) in length. If the name sounds familiar it is because there was a German U Boat base located there in WW2 and was also
the location for many scenes of the film
Das Boot. The town was almost completely destroyed by Allied bombing of the U-Boat pens so sensibilities are still a bit raw even after all this time. On the island of
Ile de Re itself, which was a fly-over point, there are still the odd remains of Anti-Aircraft installations along with the graves of Allied aircraft crewmen at several locations that are tended to by the
Commonwealth Graves Commission. The islands highest point is 20m (66 feet) , is 30km (19 miles) in length and 5km (3 miles) wide. The island was formed by the joining of three separate islands and at one point (Ars en Re) with legs spread really wide it is almost possible to place one foot in the sea at the west side of the island with the other in the sea at the eastern side. Well not really LOL, the distance is probably 150m or so.
The island sees its income arise from tourism, salt, oysters along with many French having their summer homes there. For the cyclists it is ideal as the island is 100% biker friendly with cycle paths well maintained and for the most part completely away from other traffic. Located on the Atlantic coast though means that it can sometimes get rather windy which with muscle powered bikes can be a bit unpleasant to say the least. We were glad to find, therefore, that the community lay on a Mini-bus service + trailer that will transport bikers from one end of the island to the other and costing only 1Euro. We were camped in the middle of the island and so took advantage of this service one day to travel to the Lighthouse at the Northern end of the island before returning using our own power.
Anyway, enough of the chat I'll leave you with some pictures to look at.