Friday 3rd July – Week 3 – Eguisheim and Colmar

The heat and humidity continue. It's getting really muggy now something has got to give and I feel it might be me. Mid morning sightseeing runs in the mid 30's and the humidity is through the roof. Anne's fear of thunder and lightning has been forever cured, because it's as regular as breathing at the moment. It's all happening a fair distance away, but so far there's been no cloud burst to bring the temperature, or the humidity, down.

We headed off to Eguisheim, after a breakfast of Pain au Raisin and Pain au Chocolat. This campground has the luxury of a shop that stocks fresh pasties every morning, so we're making the most of that while it lasts. Eguisheim is a small town about 15kms away from Ribeauville. All the towns in the area are located very close to one another and this would appear to be because the locals live in the town and work on the vineyard, so had to live reasonably close to their own vineyard.

The town is once again picture postcard, but as we walked around it, the skies darkened and we were soon walking in the midst of a constant shower. We stopped by the main town's square for a coffee, along with all the septuagenarian cyclists that had decided that this riding lark wasn't nearly as good when it rained. After the coffee, we visited the local church which was the most elaborate affair we've come across so far, and once again, very in keeping with German rather than French taste (or at least what I've observed of French taste in church interiors, which is very austere. I took a quite neat photo of the interior of the church, which required a 4 second exposure time, because the church was so dark. The result was rather good, if I say so myself, and revealed an array of colours and patterns that are not visible to the naked eye.

Next stop after Eguisheim was the town of Colmar, a biggish town with a population of around 100,000 people. We spent about 3 hours walking round the town, photographing the small squares and the streets and visiting their little Venice, although the name is a bit of a stretch because 1 small canal does not make ones city the next Venice. Returning from a brief visit to an electronics shop, we were greeted with black skies and the rain had started. We decided to head back to Ribeauville amidst a moderate rain shower. Stopping at a Decathlon shop on the outskirts of Colmar, we heard the heavens open above us onto the roof of the mega store. Leaving the store, we stopped to check out how next year's tent, an example of which had been pitched outside the store, would handle a Noah-esque torrential down pour. Heading back to Ribeauville, the rain was unbelievably heavy, so we stopped for an extended visit to the supermarket, hoping to see the storm pass. The storm seemed a bit more than the locals are used to, as every aisle at the supermarket had a bucket in it, and when we ventured outside, the local fire department had been called to pump out the basement, which had obviously flooded.

Wondering how the tent had survived and keen to see the devastation, we returned to the campground to find that our tent was only slightly damp inside, but very muddy on the outside. Others had not faired so well and some of the tent sites were in a hollow, so we watched with interest as one diligent wife removed 3 10 litre pales of water for inside their tent (while her husband had a cigar outside :-( ). All around the campsite, people were busying themselves with sponges, mops and brooms (where does all this stuff come from) to mop up from the deluge. We did a quick assessment, had a brief chat with the neighbours, decided that things were looking ok and headed into town for dinner. We were pleased that we'd put our sleeping bags in the waterproof bag we carry all our camping gear in, as despite the massive down pour, they were still totally dry. The neighbours told us that when they were sitting in the tent during the down pour, they could feel some big creeks start to develop under their tent. We decided that we had been best to stay away and that our ignorance is bliss policy had worked well for this camping dilemma.

We returned after dinner to a mostly dry tent and turning over the air bed to conceal the wet patch that had caught the slight leak, we settled in for a quiet nights sleep.