Today was only our third day off, or “rest” day of the trip. We had originally scheduled 6, as past experience has shown that it can be difficult if you cycle more than 6-8 days in a row. But our schedule was altered, first due to the extra day at Leiven’s for fixing our rear wheel. Then we hit the 9 days of headwinds, which put us behind schedule.
But the last “day off” was an experiment. Since we were in the middle of Chateau country, we instead had 3 short riding days, taking the remainder of those days for Chateau visits. It worked, as we were then able to do a week of riding longer distances to make up the schedule and now recover in Besancon.
This town is wonderful. As usual it has a number of Churches, like Saint Jeans.
But the high point of the day, both in the tour and very literally, was the Citadel. It’s ramparts reminded us of Dubrovnik.
From there we could see our path by the river, when we entered town yesterday.
And from the other side, we could see the bike path we will use tomorrow as we continue up river.
Rather than a single wall around the Citadel, it has an elaborate defensive network of multiple walls, valleys, and fields. Most of these have now been turned into one of the best zoos we have seen. Here is one of those sections.
Then, starting tomorrow we will have a somewhat different trip. Looking ahead to traveling in Switzerland, not only will our lodging costs increase significantly, but we will need to have reservations well in advance. So instead of planning each day as it comes, we now have a 6 day plan all the way to Gumligen, already knowing where we will be each day. But the daily distance will be 15-20k less than we have been doing this past week, so we feel confident we can do it.