Tour de France: Day 37

Day 37: Balstahl

Today marked the first cooler day we have had in many weeks (particularly for Bruce who is on the full six week tour). Most of the tour has experienced blazing sunshine and it is only since we have entered Switzerland that we have experienced slightly cooler temperatures. Today and yesterday we had some slight rain but temperatures have still been mild and we have not been cold since our experience at Hautcom and Col dAllos. It is quite novel and exciting to hear the different language spoken and to see different sights to those experienced in France. Today after about 25kms we passed through an area that is deemed ‘more german than germany’. Everybody speaks switzer-german. It is hard to appreciate that the limited French that we have picked up is now not necessarily understood. On arrival at our accommodation in Balstahl we have difficulty communicating that Tui would like a cup of tea to a waiter that does not speak English or French. This is one of the few times we have had this experience as generally either stilted French or English has proved effective. A shift in choice is made to ovaltine and all is fine. We have enjoyed seeing many of the supermarkets in our travels and the various produce and foods available. Noticeably cheese and meats are very different. Also, with summer we have been enjoying lots of the summer fruits such as apricots, nectarines, apples and today for the first time strawberries (sorry to everyone at home who I understand are having a very wet time in Christchurch-it will be a shock to our system when we return!). Today we biked through a lot of agricultural landscape including potato, celery, leeks and corn crops. Much of the cycling through the south of France and also through Switzerland has included acre after acre of corn. We also began to see for the first time our first crops of poppies seen during our travels yesterday. We are hopping we will get to see fields of them so that we can get some good photos. Although we have seen fields of sunflowers we have not stopped to take photos of this previously so today was a good opportunity to take the obligatory sunflower paddock photos. Our guide Axel is very knowledgeable about the area having spent a lot of time in this part of the world previously. Today he pointed out to us the unique farmhouses which contain the house; stable for animals and also the space for the stock under the house all in one building on the same site. These are very distinctive looking houses and they are usually weatherboard construction. We stopped at a lovely town called Solothurn on the ride today and passed through some distinctive gates at the entry to the village. This was quite a different style of town to the medieval village we stayed near in Lully. The towns appear a lot more diverse than France and each has its own unique qualities that set it apart from the previous one. Tomorrow we ride with our passports in our bike tops again as we pass through the border from Switzerland into Germany. We are all looking forward to our rest day on Day 39 in Freiberg (Germany) and we are beginning to appreciate that our journey will before long be coming to an end on day 43 when we are in Paris and when the 2014 Tour de France comes into town followed by the end departure date of the tour on day 44: 28th July. Bruce and I have a few additional days planned in Paris before we head back to NZ departing 31 July. We look forward to spending some time with a good friend from New Zealand and her partner in Paris before heading home.