The epilogue of my Hochsauerland Tour 2022 turned into a complete cluster fuck.
Not (only) because of the weather: mostly foggy and back to near freezing temperatures, which is not nice but you can dress for that.
But while I usually meticulously plan and (double) check my route, I completely dropped the ball on this one.
And when I (finally) gave up, I managed to not save my ride 🤦♂️
I pushed the stop button, put my Edge in my back pocket to get the bike in the car, then changed clothes, only to find that the touch screen had received “input” that discarded my ride…
We ended at the Brilon Wald railway station we used for a break before, but even they had nothing to offer today, so no strudel to finish off the tour…
The first 20+ kms went as planned/expected, shorter and longer climbs following each other in rapid succession and hardly any views to speak of because of the fog.
But then the misery started…
We ran into a very steep climb, seemingly ending at the parking lot of a restaurant but Paula assured me had to go straight on, the road turning into a Zoncolan, but at least it was paved.
However, after about a kilometer, she noticed the position dot on the screen moved off the route, so she told me to return.
(In case you’re wondering: my Edge had already completely lost signal and didn’t give me any movement, let alone “off course” warnings.)
Back at the parking lot, we turned left – which would have been a right turn when first getting there – and while I at first thought that the dirt track would roll into a (semi) asphalted road further on, I should have counted my blessings and returned down to the main road.
Instead, I followed the forest “road” which was near impossible for me, but even Paula had a hard time riding it.
A four by four or tractor would have had no problem with it, but our Peugeot Partner is neither.
On. the bright side: you do not often get to see a flock of chamois crossing your path 😎
Not the best quality and they were a lot closer to me than to Paula, but my GoPro wasn’t running and covered in mud anyway…
All in all, that 10 kilometer stretch took me well over an hour and if I had paid more attention while planning and had followed the main road, that would have been a lot shorter and probably no more than 10 minutes tops.
After this debacle, we ran into what looked like another such stretch and then another, so we followed the main road(s) until I was fed up and gave up.
As both Garmin and Strava send Paula a notification with a link to follow me, I only – or better: at least – have the screenshots from that to show for my effort.
I manually entered the ride into Strava, which doesn’t offer elevation to add in the mobile version, but I found out that you can enter that when using the desktop version.
However, as that doesn’t get into the VeloViewer activity wheel – and I like fancy shit – I manually processed the file for a ~20 kph average and got a whopping 66 Watts average for it from Strava – seems about right 🤪
That Strava entry also contains some pictures – on the right spots along the route too – and I am actually proud of Paula that she got out of the car at all as I could see it was even colder for her.
Not the epilogue and conclusion of an otherwise successful – no thanks to the weather – week in the area, but we will return here.
