Efringen-Kirchen

Back in Germany but still only just on the border with Switzerland. We looked at what to do in the area and decided to cycle to Basel, which is back in Switzerland. The pull of that country seems strong! Basel is a town but it has a nice river bank where you can sit and watch the Rhine drifting by. The thing to do in Basel also involves drifting on the Rhine, basically you get into the Rhine at the top of town and drift down 2K before scrambling out, it’s called Rhine Swimming. Nearly everyone that does it has a Wickelfisch in tow, we don’t have a wickelfisch nor a spare 30CHF each to buy one, but given they are simply brightly coloured waterproof bags and we do have our kayak dry bags we returned the next day dressed for the occasion and floated with our bright blue kayak dry bags down the Rhine. A rather pleasant experience that you really should try if you are ever in Basel. A word of warning, if you are going to use ageing kayak dry bags check they don’t have holes in, luckily I had done a risk assessment and our phones were in a smaller dry bag inside the larger one. The two days here were the days that the temperature hovered around 40 so on the way back from Basel we stopped in the nature reserve we cycled through and took a plunge in a different part of the Rhine. Our other pastime of walking took us on a brief stroll one evening to France but we spent a few minutes looking at the very large barges on the Alsace canal and then wandered home for evening meal.

The site (Stellplatz) was more like a France Aire, parking dedicated to motorhomes with services for €11.