Day 11 - 78 km, 570m ascent, lots of rain
--> raised CHF 2400.-
Day eleven - We reached out goal! 806 km!
Day eleven was tough in a different way: Lots of rain, some hills, which are hard to go down. Basically, we were soaked and cold all day. As we were following the Rhine river, past the Rhine Falls, which we didn't visit, as it was raining hard at that time. The river Rhine already has an impressive size at that point and acts as a natural boarder between Germany and Switzerland at most places. There are exceptions though: Stein am Rhein and Schaffhausen or example have enclaves on the German side, which sometimes makes it hard to navigate. While for the past decades the boarders had been removed, with Covid we tried to make sure not to cross into Germany by mistake, as we didn't bring our passports. So, we had to backtrack a bit and keep reading the maps. The landscape was lovely soft hills, with ups and downs, and, as Anthony pointed out: "It looks like home." Simply, because it was: We had been circling around home for the past days. As we also reached our aim of cycling around Switzerland for more than 800km, we decided to just head home, cuddle the cats and have a lovely Carribbean fish dish; a great change from the store bought salads or the take out pizza we'd been feeding on for the past days. As we kept our budget low, we decided to triple our pledge for this last day, so we give CHF 30.- per kilometer, which adds up to CHF 2340.- Also a friend promised to send £ 50.- and another friends, one from as far as Mexico, have promised to send some, we're doing good. For those in Switzerland: We changed our plan, to accommodate more people and will do a "victory lap" on Saturday. The plan is to start from home to Rapperswil and from there cycle to Zurich, hoping this is most convenient for everyone to join or meet. Please, let us know if you can. It would be marvellous! Please join us tomorrow as we talk about our achievements and plans for empowermefirst.college. We showed you with this bike trip, how determined we are to make this work and how great our team in the background is. So expect much from us. We thank you for your support. We could not have reached so far without our amazing volunteers and without our donors believing in us!
Congratulations!