The ratio of down to up hill improved significantly today we had one steep down hill section of 6km and a more shallow section of 15km. In between there were, naturally, some uphill bits. I managed some of them, but walked other bits. It was really nice cycling along the river (a broad stream by NZ concepts) that runs from Blankenheim along route 258. The dissadvantage was the lack of cycle paths and the fact that people drive really quickly along this road because this is the road to the Nurburgring racetrack.
If you zoom in you can see me grinding my way up on the left side of the road. Note all the big trucks etc..
The villages that we stopped in along the way are really pretty, with lots of tudor style houses. We stopped a bit more frequently today to load up with fuel and water for the uphill bits. In one village it was market day and they had a dutch cheese van selling cheese from the Gouda and Stolwijk region (amongst others). In the next village we stopped for pizza, very nice pizza. On top of a particularly gnarly hill it was icecream.
A small part of the 45m by 11m screenWe are now in the most expensive hotel of our trip, right beside the Nurburgring. The Nurburgering is a huge complex complete with indoor/outdoor roller-coaster, indoor adventure/challenge course, and shops with all the toys you might want (e.g. expensive cars, car parts in case you damage them, signage printing shop in case you've damaged the body work etc.) The TV screen advertising events is 45m wide by 11m tall, which makes it the biggest screen in Europe, and the fourth biggest in the world. We asked the man that was programming it, and it can be difficult to get all the sections of the screen in sync at times.
My new red jacket - George has one tooBoy did we pick the right day to get here. Shell V-Power is hosting a party for several hundred people. Top Gear already put on a show for them today and there are more public Top Gear shows over the next three days. We managed to snaffle a Shell jacket each, five Magnum icecreams, bottles of water, a power drink (saving that for a hill tomorrow) and a Nurburgring programme from earlier this year. All this was after we'd had a Subway sandwich each, so we were then desparately avoiding the girls handing out the icecreams - couldn't face any more! Once we were wearing our pretty red jackets the security guards no longer tossed us out of the interesting places. If we really try we might even be able to get into the giant tent set up behind the hotel - but I can't really face more food at the moment.
Tomorrow we carry on along route 258 to Koblenz. Then we'll see when and where we'll catch a train back to Frankfurt or whether we cycle the whole way.
Well actually we are now staying an extra night and going to the racing today, and the Top Gear show tonight. Good thing too because it is heavy rain with occasional thunderstorms today and in NL there have been floods due to heavy rain, including the area that we cycled through.
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