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Friday 1st September 2017 Oppenheim to Boppard We got up early today hoping to get a prompt start and do a few extra miles to make up for the short days we'd had following my mishap. We were staying at an apartment and no breakfast was supplied so we had to make do with a couple of dates and an apricot each. Craziness, eh. The owners of the apartment were a very nice family and let us use their hose to wash the bikes down before we left.
The first leg to Mainz took about 5 km longer than expected and it was a pain getting past the city. It seemed to take ages and I started to doubt if we'd be able to make our target destination, Boppard. After Mainz, however, progress improved as we rolled along well-surfaced, traffic-free cycle-ways, all, happily, with a very slight downward incline.
From Bingen the river entered the scenic stretch of pretty villages and ogres' castles on every crag, the Grimms fairyland Trisha and I had sailed down with the Vikings a couple of years before. We rode past the Lorelei Rock where river-farers were lured to their doom by the song of a spurned maiden... ah, the stories and history are oozing out of the very rocks here!
We paused in Bacharach, a very pretty village, then bashed on against a bit of annoying headwind, finally reaching Boppard. The bike computer was reading 99.65 km at this point and no rational man could leave it at that so I rode up and down the street until it clocked over to 100 km, while Andrew and the hotel landlady watched, the latter slightly bewildered and asking Andrew why I wasn't coming inside. (Andrew, of course, knew better than to expect anything else).
Compact but clean and functional, our accommodation for the night - the Hotel Sonnenhof. We later got an omelette in the Alte Schmiede and a couple of beers in the Hotel zur Krone.
It's a long trip and though fun & pleasant, I think both of us are ready now for the finale and reunion with our loved ones. Today we did 62 miles, bringing our total to 563.47 miles. | |||||||||||
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