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Saturday 2nd September 2017 Boppard to Bad Godesburg Today's ride was easy enough in truth but I had screwed up the bike computer by inadvertently changing the wheel circumference setting. This meant it was saying we'd done more kilometres than we really had so when we were thinking we were nearly there we actually still had miles and miles yet to go... That made it feel tiring even though we really ended up doing no more miles than we would have done anyway... if you follow me.
Anyway after leaving Boppard we cycled along to Koblenz where the mighty Moselle river joins the Rhine. Koblenz is a very nice city and we paused there to admire the massive, teutonic statue to Emperor Wilhelm I, or Wilhem dem Grossen as the inscription put it. A modest, sensitive sort of chap by the look of him. Actually the original statue was blown up by the Americans at the end of World War II but following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany a replica statue was put up in 1993, as a symbol of German unity.
From Koblenz it was easy riding north along the west banks of the Rhine. We passed by the remains of the bridge of Remagen, the only bridge across the Rhine not to be destroyed by the retreating Germans during the war. It fell down shortly after being captured by the Americans, killing a number of them, and hasn't been rebuilt. Hitler had five of his military leaders executed for allowing the bridge to fall into the hands of the allies intact.
We arrived fairly knackered and rained on in Bad Godesburg, our apartment for the night being cheap (57 euros for both) and spartan. At first I thought we were the only people in this large, slightly dilapidated, pre-war building but we did see some others later. There was no breakfast included for our 57 euros; what we got was a large room with a couple of beds, a separate, shared bathroom, and a communal kitchen. A faint smell of curry drifted in and out of the rooms. It was a cash-in-hand job and the owner of the hand disappeared as soon as he had cash in it. We chained the bikes up and left them under a flimsy, rotting shelter in the back garden... the whole place was a bit neglected and run-down really. After a shower and the usual chores we were off into town to find food and drink but first there was a highly-skilled job to do. It was time to take my stitches out. The nice lady doctor at the hospital had said she could take them out or alternatively we could have a bash at DIY. Well we couldn't hang around Lorrach for a whole week so she had shown Andrew what to do and added a forceps and scalpel to the plastic bag full of medical stuff which the hospital had generously given me. Andrew now responded to the call and a fine job of unstitching me he did too - thanks, Andrew.
We then walked into Bad Godesburg and for the first time saw some of the impact the last year's mass immigration has had on Germany. Middle Eastern shops and restaurants were everywhere, all the signs and shop names in Arabic script and the menus too so we had no idea what food was being offered. In the end we kept on walking through the quarter and finally found a Greek place doing a variety of tapas. That sufficed.
Today we did 52.7 miles, bringing our total to 616.17 miles. | ||||||||
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