Encounters on the road were often intense, and uplifting. Riding past Mannheim towards Karlsruhe, a long-distance racer let me draft for two hours on his wheel, shouting wisecracks into his slipstream. On another occasion, I was welcomed into a nunnery during a thunderstorm. One of the sisters, Angeline, confided that the community was dying out. “You must know someone who wants to join us,” she said.
Pressure of time sadly meant I could not make a detour to the Alsace Wine Route, but I carved out a few hours to enjoy cafe society in Basel, where I began the last leg of the route in Switzerland. People of all ages slipped into their swimming costumes and floated downstream, clutching their belongings in bright fish-shaped “Wickelfisch” waterproof bags.
AlamyThe stretch running 150km (93 miles) eastwards towards Lake Constance deserves to be better known. The Rhine is straddled by a series of fairytale-like wooden bridges, with the longest at Bad Sackingen. There was not enough time to do justice to the fabulous medieval town of Stein-am-Rhein, with its half-timbered houses jutting out into the street and a square surrounded by facades depicting mythological themes.
As I neared the finish line, there was another twist in store for me. For the previous 1,000km I had immersed myself in German-language culture, which I felt would unlock the secrets of the Rhine. Now high in the Swiss Alps, the route took me to one of the last redoubts of the Romansh language, descended from Vulgar Latin spoken by Roman soldiers who invaded in 15 BCE. Pausing to buy a snack, I racked my brain for my schoolboy Latin, but remained stuck on: “Veni, vidi, vici“.
