The day started with the local church bell going absolutely nuts. I don't know if the bell ringer was told to take the minutes of the weekly church meeting but he certainly rang them. Anyway, I got my things packed up and wandered over to the farmhouse to tap on the kitchen window to say thankyou but nobody was home. It was 8am and I don't think farmers lay in past 6am do they?
On the road my legs felt heavy and cumbersome. Cycling to Zurich as the crow flies was impossible so I found myself cycling up and down and back and forth in directions I had already been in which is unbelievably frustrating. First hour down and I had gone nowhere but my legs were ready to stop for the rest of the day, this was not good. I had written a list of all the places leading to Zurich from Basel and I hadn't recognised any of them. Still, I continued to head for the sun and hoped a bus stop with a map on helped me in some way. I eventually arrived at a cross-roads, right was a town called Aarau (I knew this was a bit south of Zurich) and left was a town called Frick, ironically this is what I said a lot when coming to most cross-roads. A lady was trimming her garden hedge on the corner of the cross-roads so I asked her, "excuse me, what way is the easiest way to Zurich?" "Well it depends what you mean by easiest, do you want shorter or do you want easier?" That said it all really, there was no easy way. I opted for the longer flatter route and as it happened I got to Frick in no time. From then on I could follow my list of towns all the way into Zurich at a really good pace. After such a hard morning, things eventually came into place and at one point I was cycling hard up a hill with trees and other hills surrounding me. All of a sudden, with one slight corner at the crest of the hill everything opened up. My peripheral vision was filled with blue skies over looking rolling hills overlooking the town of Baden situated deep into the valley. With a long winding dissent ahead of me I cranked up the gears and let out a war cry, "waaaaaahhhoooooo" the wind against my face combined with the unbelievable view made the hairs all over my body stand up. Then in my ear came the live version of "times like these" by the foo fighters and everything just seemed to get too much emotionally and the tears started to fall. If ever there was the most apt song and its lyrics it was right there and right then. This was definitely a moment I will remember for a long time to come.
Previously to starting my trip I have been emailing a coach from FC Zurich called Heinz Russheim. I told him when I was in Basel that I would be arriving in Zurich Saturday but was unsure whether I could get to him until Sunday and asked when he was available. The last e-mail I received he had replied saying yes from 2pm. I was a bit gutted as I didn't think I was gong to make 2pm on Saturday but as it happened I made great time and arrived just outside Zurich at 1:30pm. Great I thought, I thought I knew roughly where Heinz said the training ground was so I was well happy I could fit everything in one one day! The weather forecast was unfortunately spot on and the rain began to fall and get progressively heavier. I pulled up at the traffic lights alongside an elderly man in a poncho who had a fly swatter and a pair of branch cutters in the basket on the back of his bike, (all a gardener needs I guess!) "WHERE YOU GOING?" He spoke quite loudly due to the noise of the traffic. "Do you know where FC Zurich training ground is?" I replied. "I KNOW THE FC ZURICH OFFICES" "no not there, there's another place" I knew where the offices were also and the training ground is in the opposite direction. "Just to the lakeside I guess then." "IM GOING THERE TOO, I SHOW YOU ALL THE WAY, THIS PACE GOOD? I HAVE ELECTRICAL ASSISTANCE!" He had a little motor on his bike to help with the pedalling and I followed him around 2 miles to the lakeside. I laughed as he shouted the whole conversation to me and spoke to most the people on the pavement also. "OY OY OY" he would exclaim when i told him the distances ive been cycling. A great character that really helped me and also gave me a little guided tour on the way. When we got to the lakeside we exchanged information and parted ways. So i would like to thank Mr Hans-Rudolf Schreiber for his help and hopefully he can follow me through this blog.
So I set off for the training ground, by this time it was 2pm but I knew I was only 8km away so that would take me around 20minutes no problem. My navigation so far has been pretty good considering my resources. I've managed to get to Zurich from Calais with a map that has about as much detail as a school globe! I just had to remember the map from the email that I received. By this time the rain was torrential and I really wasn't enjoying myself. I asked countless people if they knew where Zurich trained and nobody had even the slightest incling. This'll do I thought, it got to around 4pm and i decided to call it a day on the search. For the first time this trip my internal sat nav had failed me. I was pretty gutted that I couldn't watch the academy and this turned into total devastation when I pulled up to a bus shelter and turned around to find that the baguette that I had Bungy corded to my bike and clearly forgotten about, looked like it had been used as rudder for a round the world yacht race! The bus shelter I stopped at was more like a little house and it even had public toilets out the back so I sat in there and ate wet bread and jam and watched the rain continue to chuck it down. Great! What do I do now? I changed my clothes and dried off a little and decided the bus stop is the best place to stay the night. All around the lake in Zurich are houses and if I'm going to stay the night I may aswell stay there and re-evaluate after I've spoken to Heinz again. Thankfully the rain stopped so I made another decision to pack up Nigel, lock him away and go find wifi on foot. Another mechanical fart in my sat nav proved that I was a lot further from Zurich as I first thought. It took me an hour to walk into the main town and by now my legs are stiffer than those of Atlas. I managed to get to my trusty McStop and prepared myself to write an email apologising to Heinz. I was probably going to say that I would have to give the visit a miss as I can't stay in the bus stop for three nights but I saw he had messaged me. 2pm on Sunday it said. YES! Get in! This I can do I thought. In seconds, the pain of cycling around for ages in the pouring rain had gone and I was looking forward to tomorrow. The only issue now was how to I get back to Nigel. I knew the town I left him in but there are so many ways to get to one place around Zurich one can easily get lost. I left Zurich at 7:30 and knew I had walked along way so I was preparing myself for a fair trek back to Nigel. A fair trek is an understatement! I very rarely get lost but today was a day where I can hold my hands up and say I had no clue where I was! I wandered and asked and wandered and asked, nobody knew the town called fallacher and I was starting to think that I had made it up! 3 and a half hours later I was reunited with Nigel and its fair to say my legs were like cement. Riding over 60 miles for a route that could've been done in 40 if I was a car and walking for 4 and half hours that could've been done in 20 minutes if I was a car makes me want to be a car right now. Another situation however to learn from, tomorrow I have saved a map and studied it with more intensity than when I was searching through the clearance shelf in Lidl looking for a "Swiss bargain" oh, did I mention Switzerland is quite expensive?.....
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