Day 21: Rapperswil to Rorshach

 

The Rapperswil hostel served a late breakfast, so it wasn't until almost 9pm before we left Rapperswil and headed towards Watwil. The Edge 705 did a great job navigating us on minor roads to Eschenbach, where the climb to Ricken on the main highway was busy. At Ricken I spotted a bike path towards Watwil, and immediately hopped onto it. It turned out to be a gorgeous dirt road that descended gently down towards Watwil. In Watwil, I somehow got turned around and followed the bike path towards Ebnat-Kappel instead of heading towards Lictensteig. After about 5 kilometers and a bit of climbing I realize the road looked familiar and pulled out the map. It turned out that we were on the bike path towards Schwagalp, rather than the shortest route to the Bodensee, which Lisa wanted to see.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

I turned the bike around and abandoned the bike path, crossing a covered bike bridge and headed on the main road to Ebnat-Kappel, where we had a grocery store lunch just before the SPAR closed at 12:15pm.

We rode to Lichtensteig, where we finally picked up a bike path for Flawil. This bike path wound around beautiful in the country side before crossing a stream and taking us to Unterrindal. Following the signs to St. Gallen, we rode along until I started seeing bike path signs for Waldkirch and Bischofszell. The dirt path took us into Waldkirch, but then petered out. Lisa was tired of meandering about at this point (it was also well above 85 degrees out and warm), so she asked me to take the most direct route to the Bodensee. This meant ignoring the bike path and following the road, so we rode to Wittenbach and then started a descent into Arbon.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

Arbon was a beautiful sea side town, but whoever placed the tourist information center did not do a good job providing signs to it. Since it was a Wednesday night, I decided we would do fine just by rolling down to the water and riding towards Austria. The first hotel we tried was fine, but didn't have anything to offer it. I also wanted an early breakfast the next day so we could get to the German train station by 9:00am, which was when the Bayern ticket hours started. The next hotel was pricey, and they gave away the room while I was making a decision about it. We finally found one in Rorshach that offered a 7:00am breakfast and had decent rooms. It also hosted other cyclists, and had a very friendly manager. It was pricey, but the combination was pretty rare, so I sprang for it.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

That evening after dinner, we walked along the Bodensee and admired the quiet scenery. Then the world cup game ended and all night it became honking of horns and cars driving through the streets at high speed making it tough to sleep. Fortunately, I thought, tomorrow would be an easy day.

Next
Prevous