The second stage of our Tour around lake Zurich looked like it was going to be a washout. The weather forecast was for rain all day and as I left home I made sure I had packed my waterproofs. This was a good move as it guaranteed that the sun would come out but, unfortunately in my eagerness to ensure I brought clothing for all weather I managed to leave the maps for the day sitting on the couch!!!
We all met at 10am at the train station in Rapperswil and were all quite happy that that it looked like the rain was holding off. By 10:10am we were riding out off town and heading towards Jona and the first trail which I hadn’t ridden since 2003!!! It also looks like no-one else has ridden the trail since 2003 and sections of what I had remembered to be a flowing trail was now totally overgrown and had enough trees down across the trail that we carried our bikes as much as rode them! Eventually we go to the end of the trail took to the fire-road, missed a turn and ended up right back where we had come from..
Take 2: We headed off again in a slightly different direction, in our effort to ride singletrail as much as possible we soon ended up running out of trail and bushwhacking our way back onto the fireroad. Without the map we started following signposts for Eschebach, once again we took a wrong turn and ended up looping back on ourselves!!! This time we got a tasty section of singletrail for our efforts though. At this point we decided it was time to push on and used the paved roads to get to Schmerikon.
From Schmerikon we took to the gravel once more and followed the canal towards Wallensee until we could cross over and ride back through the woods on the other side of the lake. This time there were no wrong turns and we had an uneventful ride through the woods back to Lachen and then followed the Wanderweg (Hiking Trail) signs to Pfaffikon SZ.
All in all it was great to be out on the bike with friends, but taking a couple of wrong turns and going around in circles at the start of the day was a little disappointing (and entirely my own fault). I guess I’ll have to go and ride the intended route over the next few days.
The ride was 43km long with about 600m of climbing which included going around in circles at the start.
Stage 3: Will be from Pfaffikon SZ to Sihlbrugg.
