Distance. 61km
Total. 665km
Our hotel last night was the best value yet. It was a modern style hotel, 80 euros for the night including a great breakfast. We really stocked up and stashed a smoked salmon sandwich for lunch.
Weather is still sunny with a cool start but warming as we cycled. We didn’t have a long day cycling but we enjoyed not being rushed. We also pondered on our experience of Germany so far. As always, it seems clean and orderly, not much graffiti and not as rushed as the UK. People are more considerate, especially to cyclists. Cars constantly stopped and gestured for us to cross the road. On our foreign travels we often feel that other countries are less busy than ours.....we cycle around 9am and the roads are much quieter. Britain seems to be so rushed and congested at all times.....I think we have something so wrong with the way we live and cram too much in.
We crossed the Rhein again by ferry and stopped for a coffee watching giant barges sail past.
We shouldn’t forget that today is Global Environment Protest Day. We stopped short of lying down in the middle of the cycle path (if I did I would be called a ‘psychol path’)! We certainly must be ‘carbon offsetting’ more than most by travelling around on our bikes.
We stopped for a look around Germersheim which was a fortress city built to defend itself again French aggression. Many of the military buildings had been retained and renovated. Some much so, they looked pretty new.
We found a nice quiet place for our lunch overlooking a lake and then pressed on to the lovely town of Speyer. We have visited it before but couldn’t resist it again.
The Dom church is a whopper. It was originally consecrated in 1061 and at the time it was Western Europe’s largest Romanesque church. The towns Technical Museum includes several aircraft, including the Boeing 747 in the picture. We didn’t visit the museum (I have visited it previously, so I would recommend it). It is possible to walk out onto the planes wing! At least this plane is not polluting the planet any more, you don’t get lower carbon emissions than that.
Today I managed to keep my ice cream consumption high, this time with a blackberry flavour ice cream. The price of ice cream in Germany is pretty good...just 1.20 euro for a single scoop cone. Judging from what we saw, most people in the town centre were eating ice creams today.
Our accommodation tonight is an apartment to the north of the city. Very modern and swish, it can’t have been hired out for long. It could cater for up to 5 people but we enjoyed it to ourselves. Proper comfort....we even cooked a meal for ourselves as we had full facilities.
On a different note- the Rugby World Cup started today in Japan. We will probably find it difficult to watch any of the games live but hope to stream some highlights where WiFi permits. We saw a news item that said two men cycled from Twickenham to Japan to watch the World Cup.....now there’s an idea for the next Rugby World Cup.......in France in 2023! I think I might be able to manage that....anyone interested?
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