Cycling out of Bure went without any problems caused by the police, but the first difficulty of the day came up not much later, when one of the people in front cycled downhill hands-free, the handle bar turned, and the whole bike flipped over its front wheel, bending the wheel to an unusable state. Fortunately some of us had left late and had just passed La Gare, which is the second base of the resistance in Bure a bit further away from the forest, and they had a lot of bike parts lying around. We found a good new wheel and eventually caught up with the broken bike.
The first evening we all arrived early and camped in a beautiful forest next to a sheep pasture. We spent the evening watching the sunset and making music until late at night.
The next day was hot and hilly, and some of us were still exhausted from the food intoxication that they got in Bure. We had planned to do 80 km that day, because we were delayed in our schedule, but after 60 km met to talk how far we would want to go because we were all tired. While sitting in a circle outside of a shop, a random man approached us who told us that he had already met some of us earlier that day and invited us to stay in his garden close by. There, we set up a small compost toiled and a hose shower and had a nice evening together with our host. Unfortunately, two people had already arrived at our planned destination for the day when we made the decision to not go that far, but because there was a mountain pass in between, there was unfortunately no way for us to unite again for that night.
Now the harder part of the journey started: We had to cross the Vosges mountain in order to reach the Rhine valley and cross into Germany. The first day was hilly but short – we decided to do only 30 km to do something like a half rest day, because we had to cut our originally planned rest day because of the delay in Bure. On top of the hill, the scouts sent us on a small road really steep further up the hill. Many people had to walk their bikes and almost didn’t make it. But afterwards we understood that on this route we avoided several other hills, and after the top we had the most amazing downhill without any more uphills until the camp.
We slept in the most amazing place that the people who had been ahead found when they had the whole day time to find it. It was nice grass with trees next to a football field next to a river. In the evening we did an acrobatics workshop.
The next day we crossed the last bit of the Vosges and finally reached the Rhine. We slept on a beautiful island in the middle of the Rhine just 100 metres from the border to Germany.
