Distance. 50km
Total. 1015km. Topped the Grand!
Well we had a great night in our house with 8 rooms all to ourselves. It was actually a bit strange but I don’t think we could get any better deal for the money for the space we had. Of course we spent most of the time in our room!
This is the place. We were ready to go around 8 am and a member of staff turned up just before we departed. We had to go in search of breakfast and although I have been sworn to secrecy by Janice, I will divulge that we had breakfast at a McDonalds.....the coffee was really good value and tasted nice for 1 Euro. Don’t tell anyone we’ve been to a McDonalds....please.
Our plan was to get into Cologne, known locally as Köln in respect to its twinned city of Colne, in Lancashire. The cities have a lot in common....I’m struggling to think what they have in common but I’m sure there is something?
We made good ground, so much so that we were too early for the Chocolate Museum...it didn’t open till 10am.
I think everyone’s first thought on visiting Köln is seeing the Cathedral.
Photographs never do it justice. It does look like it could do with a good sandblast on the outside but it is exceedingly grand and tall. It was the tallest building in Europe until the Eiffel Tower was built. We saw pictures of the devastation caused by the city bombing in WW2. The city was rubble and the Cathedral was the only recognisable building but it was still badly damaged.
The rest of the city didn’t grab us very much although there must be more to see that we didn’t. The weather was grey but dry, so maybe we didn’t get the best of it. We didn’t even get a free spray of Eau de Cologne, we didn’t find any shops selling it.
The first picture is a famous statue....it seemed to be a Snow White and the Dwarfs statue to us but probably is all about something else.
Look at those grey sky’s. We really got away with the weather again. We enjoyed our cycling out of the city....we both agree that the cycling is the best part of the trip, the sightseeing is a bonus. We even enjoyed the industrial landscapes. We have passed Bayer, Ford and Ineos factories and many more. We tried and failed to cycle across to the city of Leverkusen. The bridge we tried to cross was subjected to major roadworks....it carried the motorway across the Rhein but because of the roadworks the cycle path had been sacrificed. I mistakenly tried to cut across the roadworks to find the cycle path but ended up attempting to cycle the wrong way along the hard shoulder of the motorway (getting honked by passing cars). We turned around and made a speedy exit!
I caused another incident later. I have a bad habit of cycling on the left side of the cycle path when it’s quiet. The rules in Europe are that cyclists should stay on the right side, just like the driving. I was on the left side approaching an uphill bend when another chap travelling downhill at speed in the opposite direction nearly fell off because of me. He shouted something at me in German, roughly translated it must have been , “Excuse me old chap, can you move over to let me pass”. I used my tactic of pretending to be French so the English don’t get blamed for being more stupid than we already are, I shrugged, and said, “Pardon, Monsieur”.
We arrived in our town of destination rather early. We were forced to have an extra coffee and cake and browse the bargain shops of the town centre. I started to browse the cheap reading glasses......
What do you think of these. I think they are rather Jurgen Klopp......but not me!
The hotel is fine and as an added bonus, we were offered a free bottle of beer on arrival. All is going well and we stayed dry again. Surely not tomorrow as rain is forecast all day. We plan to cover some ground tomorrow to get past the industrial areas of Düsseldorf and Duisburg.
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