After a particularly poor night’s sleep, I was taken aback to find it almost nine o’clock before I got up. It was a still and clear, but very chilly, start to the day’s riding. I had better luck finding villages with open shops – so much so that first lunch was at 10.30. I think that I didn’t eat enough for yesterday’s 115 km – more bakery stops required. It was more of the same sealed trail through farmland – much easier to appreciate in the sun. Every so often I do remember to take a photo just so that I don’t forget it all in many, or a few, years’ time.

While the scenery is nice, it doesn’t thrill me the same way as riding the North American West does. Thoughts throughout the day return to the still vague possibility of riding Tour Divide 2015. While I’m beginning to realise that open-ended solo bikepacking might not be best suited to me – I’ve always loved riding singletrack unencumbered and with good mates, not much of that is happening here – a crazy undertaking such as the Divide would be quite an achievement to work towards and be lighter-weight bikepacking with more of a purpose…

As I dwell on this the route enters forested areas much more and as, I assume, there are less tractors to churn up the paths they are now gravel and that is much better. I see a lookout ahead as I approach the top of a climb, the GPS shows two small lakes below it. I was rather underwhelmed. A big disused mine, a large power plant in the distance and some other factory off to the left.

All through this trip so far I’ve been trying to remember much that I learnt about where I am from various high school and university history classes. I think, I’m sure someone will correct me below if I’m wrong, that the Saar was lost by Germany at Versailles and that was a blow as it was an industrial powerhouse – with coal and iron, & therefore steel predominating. I’ve noticed that I’m missing researching a bit about the areas I’m visiting beforehand – the reasons for this are twofold: 1) I don’t really know where I’m going until I get there and 2) I’ve such irregular internet access, such research is not possible to do on the fly.

In one small town I spied a collection of new MTBs on display down a driveway. It was actually a very small bike shop. I stopped ostensibly to look at what bikes might be popular in Germany. While the trend for e-bikes (bikes that electrically assisted, mostly uphill I think) has been around for a while, it is a little concerning and bewildering to see the popularity of full suspension e-MTBs. While I was there, I mentioned the little bit of play that had started to develop the day before. I was in luck – the guy had the correct one in stock, so I had it changed then & there.

Past Saarbrucken was my goal for the day, but only ten or fifteen kilometres short I was on the outskirts of Volklingen. The trail board mentioned an old steel works that had been preserved after the blast furnaces closed in 1986, I could see it not far away – I couldn’t resist taking a peak as I’m a sucker for industrial history, steel in particular. It turns out that it’s so well preserved that it was the first industrial site to be given UNESCO listing as a world cultural heritage site. Well, I just have to see this properly – but as it was closing for the day, it will be tomorrow – which puts everything back a couple of days. Oh well, it’s not like I’ve got a schedule.

Being a steel town, I can’t say I was surprised that the centre was pretty dead and difficult to find somewhere suitable to eat. It was a little unnerving to ride under a rail-bridge that I’d seen torpedo ladles of molten hot metal roll over a few minutes before. The bridge held.