Oldies Gap Year

And so we are in Holland, having passed through a very mundane border area which appeared to be just on the edge of somebody's house Shall we go Dutch or German today? Let's go German as the supermarkets and the bread is better....... As you might expect, a lot of flat land, but not, necessarily without hills. Yesterdays journey was ( again according to the guide book) undulating, and yet we did as much climbing as we had done in Switzerland. This was not helped by having to take a detour in Waginengen, where a 4km time trial of a woman's cycle tour was taking place. And yes, the detour was up a hill...... Just before leaving Germany we stayed in a very quiet little campsite, and treated ourselves to two enormous steaks at the campsite restaurant. Run by a father and daughter team who were all smiles at the inevitable malpronuciation of "medium rare" in German that I had just looked up on google translate, they were worked off their feet by the arrival of a gaggl...

August the 26th has got us as far as just south of Dusseldorf and a rest day. The journey has been quite magical in places, a tad frustrating in others. (Sorry about the wonky formatting here. Perhaps my mastery of blogging is not as complete as I thought) The stuff of legend. Much of the route from my last post has been through the postcard scenery that always seems to accompany Rhine cruises - steep vineyards, forest clad mountainsides and lots of castles. Sian has been doing her best to keep me abreast of all the legends that go with this area courtesy of the little guide book. However, there are rather a lot of them, and it's best if I just describe them as some sort of legend that fits all. Basically you need to think of brothers feuding over a beautiful fraulein who eventually gets fed up and disappears off to marry someone else, an evil Bishop burning villagers to death and then himself getting gnawed to death by marauding mice. You get the idea..... Any Sc...

Older readers might have seen cartoons by a cartoonist called Heath-Robinson, who drew pictures of improbable devices made up of everyday items usually cobbled together with pieces of knotted string. Part of the attraction of having to be minimalistic bike touring is improvising and I’m rather proud of the following items. 1) Coffee maker.  Following the great #nodecentinstantcoffeeinsupermarkets scandal, I bought this little device (it’s a french tea maker - basically two halves of a tea strainer) and adapted it by filing down the edges with any bit of concrete I could find.(Note - another thing to amuse the natives). It now fits very neatly into the Starbucks (other coffee places are available) vacuum flask. Slowly pour boiling water into the coffee, and voila - a great cup of coffee, with the added bonus of the vacuum flask keeping your coffee hot. Total cost - some 4 Euros or so More first world problems solved. 2) Solar charge holder We have a couple of...

So we are here in Geisenheim, having at last found a campsite that we are happy to linger at. Rather disappointing previous two campsites - the first being run by Frau Trunchbull, a character whose presence suggested rather strongly that she was not going to be argued with, who insisted that despite acres of fresh grass we set up camp by a muddy patch previously vacated by a tent that had been there sometime, and the second a rather pricey 25 Euro place occupied by large family groups that again despite other areas we had to pitch up by. This is a campsite right by the Rhine, and we have a prime people and boat watching spot. The Rhine is far more of a transport hub than you would first think. Massive barges carrying containers plod slowly up against the fierce current towards Basel, then lush gin palace cruise barges rush past down current, with their giant panoramic windows shielding their inhabitants from reality. Some of the smaller barges always with the owners car sat on th...

There is probably some comparison about just how far that is - something like the queue on the A3 towards Guildford each night. To us though, it’s pretty far. Whilst the profile seems to point to just downhill, this has been no release the brakes and coast down escapade, made even more tiring by the weight of the bikes. This incidentally has been gently growing due to my eternal fascination with the French Hypermarche and purchasing just one further item that will allegedly make our touring lives more complete. What have we learnt in the past 17 days? 1) Don’t follow guide books slavishly, especially the ones that seem to imply that 100km per day is achievable. It simply isn’t- not only due to the weight of the bikes, but also because you won’t actually get to enjoy the countryside as it blurs past you. 50 - 60Km is a much more realistic length that allows you to have enough time at the beginning, middle and end of the day without feeling that you have just been pummelled by a Czechosl...

There are some magnificent things about France, and one of them is the local boulangerie. Assuming that you can find one open in August, when most of France seems to disappear, and I am guessing to the south of France. But if you can find one open, there is nothing more heavenly than a warm croissant or pain au chocolat. Part of the pleasure is indeed queueing, as the queue assures you that nothing remains on the shelf for more than 30 minutes before being replaced by the toiling bakers that you can see in the rooms beyond. The queue also gives you the chance to observe the French- from the young professional in a relative hurry, to the old couple who are arguing over whether to have a long thin baguette or a short fat baguette. So sitting on a traffic bollard, eating our goodies we enjoyed 5 minutes of butter fuelled bliss. Much of the route today was along canals - so not much more level than this. We stopped overnight in a not very busy municipal campsite where shock horror ...

A very flat 60km from Basel to Neuf Brisach. Something to do with travelling along a canal tow path I guess. A very pretty campsite here in Neuf Brisach, with little individual pitches for cyclists. There are a heck of a lot of couples who demand awesome respect for bringing their tiny toddlers with them. Dad tows them in a buggy behind the bike and they all seem to sleep in one tent without much fuss. It’s totally charming to see the toddlers all wandering around in a safe environment. The area we cycled through to get here was the scene of a lot of fierce fighting during the last war, not least because Hitler regarded it as part of Germany. At a railway crossing there was an information board about a railway worker for SNCF( French Railways) who refused to be conscripted into the German army and basically had to go feral to avoid being captured. He and his family survived the war, only for him to be ironically killed in front of his family by stepping on a landmine. The campsite was ...

My mastery of google blogging is now complete. You can now press the subscribe button at the top and you will get emailed if there is anything new here. Go on, press it. You know you want to....... Well, the promised rain has arrived and it is a pretty filthy day here in Waldshut. We've decided not to brave the rain like some other souls, and stick it out here for the day. I'm reminded of a very wet day in Scotland when I was a child, where we went out for a walk in a place called Seal - an rather unremarkable island whose only claim to fame (at the time) was that it was connected by a bridge to the mainland. You could therefore say that when you walked over the bridge, you were walking over the Atlantic ocean. However, on that very wet day and I cannot remember the circumstances, we met a local family, who had a treasure chest of dressing up clothes. My brother and sister spent the entire afternoon with the other children dressing up and it remains a treasured memory. And ...

Well, having had a good night’s sleep and everything charged, we had our breakfast ( again eating pretty much anything presented to us), loaded our bikes and started off. WIth the exception that Frau Bossell came chasing out to us with her phone in the hand. “I zink that it is the police. They vont to have a word with you”. "Oh cripes DM” as Dangermouse’s assistant Penfold might have said. With all thoughts of the various permutations about what this might mean, including how the heck did anyone know where we were I picked up the phone. “Is that Mr Pfaff Muller?”, the German voice with a good English accent asked. “Err, no”, I replied. “Are you sure?”, the voice continued. Sadly, the confusion of the situation precluded me from telling him, in no uncertain words, that I was quite sure what my name was, thank you very much. I handed the phone back to the Frau, who continued the conversation, which clearly became a little more fraught. “You are WRONG!- zey are the only Englis...

I’m sorry Switzerland, it’s just not good enough. It is with displeasure that I need to report that today, for the first time, we encountered a pot hole. Whilst barely measuring about 6 inches across and about half an inch deep, it is nonetheless a great disappointment. Please ensure that this heinous scar on your roads is sorted as soon as possible. I’d also like to complain, much more seriously, about the writer of the guide book that we are following. He gaily appears to imply that as long as you rock up to your chosen destination before 4 o’clock in the afternoon there will be no end of guesthouses looking for your business. Having camped the last 3 days, and knowing that the weather was on the turn, we felt that a night with a more solid roof over our heads was in order. We arrived in Gailingen at about 2 and immediately found the tourist office, as this book said to do so. Problem 1 - It only opens from 8.30 to 12.00. Ok, let’s phone some of the guesthouses with pict...

We had preplanned to have a bit of a rest /admin day in Breganz. So luxuriating in not having to pitch the tent, we headed into town to do some food shopping early, as being Austria shops actually close early on Sundays. Had coffee in the supermarket coffee place. Got some strange looks as I went in, as I was looking for a powerpoint and therefore was scanning low down all around for the ideal table to sit. Having said that the locals were just as odd, with one elderly gentleman having the breakfast of champions - two cans of lager. The other odd old woman sat for the entire time with a half drunk glass of orange juice. What was remarkable about her however was her hair. This was dyed jet black, but cut to the shape of a cube, with a totally flat top and square sides. Presumably an important tool for her coiffeur beyond a hairdryer would also be a spirit level and a protractor. Unfortunately later on in the evening, Sian started to feel a bit sick, and later on , shall we say, h...