Circling Bodensee (Lake Constance)

My very first multi-day tour was a four-day tour of Bodensee (Lake Constance) with my friend Vera. The Bodensee tour is a very well-known and much-loved itinerary among cyclists from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It’s fairly easy, the summer weather in the area is usually pretty good and the scenery is just lovely. For a newcomer like me it was an excellent first itinerary.

As I write this intro in 2015 I have to chuckle – at the time it was a big thing for me to ride more than 30 kilometers at a stretch, so four days of around 50 kilometers each was a huge accomplishment. And one has to take my descriptions of the big hills with a grain of salt. At that time, every molehill seemed like the Matterhorn. I’m still no mountain goat but am much better than those days.

Thankfully, I mastered the tour pretty well. I had already booked my solo vacation to the Loire Valley and I was a bit scared that if I didn’t do well here, the Loire would be a disaster.