DAYS 14 & 15: WED 5 & THU 6 SEP: BAD SACKINGEN TO BASEL, SWITZERLAND

Ride: 50km; total: 499km

Cloudy, but fine, a cool 10deg to start with, warming up to 24deg. Max 21deg in Basel Thurs.

A lovely ride through the beautiful old city to get out of Bad Sackingen. I used an impressive 14th century covered wooden bridge to cross the Rhine into Switzerland where I stayed all the way to Basel. About 10km out a hard packed gravel path lead me into a silent, dark and slightly foggy forest. They don't call them the Black Forest for nothing. Unlike back home with noisy birds everywhere, the Black Forest is eerily silent with only a very occasional and isolated bird call. Oh for the noise of my crowd of rainbow lorikeets and galahs at feeding time every morning. As it was early I had the next 15km of this practically to myself. Any second I imagined I would chance across Robin Hood or William Tell!

During the day I had a wander through Rheinfelden which has one of the nicest cobbled old town centres I've ever seen; and a Roman ruin/display near Kaiseraugst. Here they have converted the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre into a modern outdoor concert venue with the tasteful use of sandstone.

The last 20km into Basel was a pleasure on a system of smooth, signed and simply fantastic bike paths. I took two days to explore this fascinating city (2nd largest in Swiss) with over 2,000 years of history. Anywhere which has a town hall build in the 16th century a Uni in the 15th and a cathedral in the 13th should be impressive, and was. It certainly has a rich variety of enjoyable experiences under one roof, so to speak. Of course it is also the home of R. Federer, a local hero no doubt. Which of the 40 museums do I choose to visit? I ended up viewing the Histories Museum to get a feel of where the city had come from, numerous squares, fountains, art spaces, gardens and the Architecture Museum as that's my bag. They were all excellent experiences.

Used a free pass (with the room) on a clean and efficient Swiss tram and bus service as Basel is quite spread out. Just a simple stick diagram of the system was sufficient to get me acting as if I lived there forever. Not a trace of vandalism or graffiti on either system. Don't tell me the kids are taught right from wrong here, go figure?@! Not a place to shop though, as it was very expensive, like all of Switzerland. A wander around the safe and colourful city on the last night topped off the Basel experience.

Apart from breakfast, which was included in the room, I ate in the supermarket chain restaurant come cafeteria, Migros, which has plain and nutritious meals from A$10 to 20. A very pleasant couple of days.

The next day I planned to meet my mate from the ol' dart, Graham Watson, who was joining me for the ride to Rotterdam.