Day 9 - Sagendobel – Freiburg (52km)

[Rich] Awaking from our country / farm yard idyll, we knew that we had just one remaining climb to negotiate this holiday. Admittedly, it was what Jan Ullrich describes in his autobiography as the hardest climb of the whole Black Forest. Still, we were at least tackling the Kandelpass on its shorter, easier side. Plus, we'd already ridden the opening three kilometres the previous evening.

From Sagendobel, the first few kilometres amongst pine trees certainly got us sweating, but the climb soon opened up and levelled out. And before we knew it, we'd reached the summit. Turns out this side of the Kandel was really not too tricky at all. We thanked Merckx for the brevity of the climb, admired the panoramic views of Freiburg, then began the descent to said town.

Freiburg viewed from the Kandelpass (l) Paul shows his delight at conquering the final climb of the holiday (r)

We soon realized that we'd climbed the easy side. The road we descended would have been a far greater challenge to ascend, given both its length and steepness. At one point, a sign warned us of roadworks ahead, but we carried on regardless. It was only when we were halted by the Polizei (that's the police) that we started paying some attention. The official waved us down, and sternly announced that the road was closed due to tree felling, and we had blatantly ignored the closed road signs - and were therefore infringing the law. At this point, I decided to feign extremely poor German. Thankfully, this tactic seemed to work. Our stereotypically humourless German policeman had initially insisted we turn back, but he finally conceded we could continue on our way. Frankly, breaking the law was the least of our worries: our main concern was to avoid climbing back up the Kandelpass on its difficult side!

Leaving the pine forests, we hit yet another picture-perfect Black Forest village, before joining the valley floor. Here, a generously wide cycle path took us all the way to Freiburg. With a couple of hours to kill before our train home, we looked around the town - which really is a gorgeously colourful, architectural delight. Having scoffed down food in a terrace café and stuffed our panniers with tourist gifts (read: bottles of schnapps), we boarded a busy train for our journey home. Despite a last-gasp effort at the station, we had visited the Black Forest and summarily failed to find any Black Forest gâteau! Ah well, I'm sure Iceland has it by the crate-load...

Paul rolls into Freiburg on an idyllic cycle path (l) Kids paddle in the typically Freiburg but no-doubt polluted 'Bächle' or gutters (r)