8 August 2010
I have to apologise for calling Neuss a boring town. We were nowhere near the town centre and it is rather nice with lots of Roman remnants. Not that we got to see much of it. The weather forecast said 27 degrees C and 30% chance of rain. We left the hotel when we thought the rain was easing. It didn't. A few kilometers from the hotel my rear tyre went flat. George changed the inner tube for the spare tube, after checking that there were no sharp bits in the tyre. Not much fun changing a tyre in the rain. A couple of km on it went flat again. This time we found a shard of glass in the tyre. Had to apply a patch as we only had one spare inner tube. Luckily, since it was still raining, we found a bus shelter to change the tyre.
So onwards, the rain didn't let up so we holed up for half an hour in a lovely little
Cafe along the Rhein. We weren't the only ones, a rather bedraggled crew of 5 rowers also sought refuge from the rain. We debated why German Cafes seem more homely and encourage you to stay longer, rather than have coffee and leave, as we do in most New Zealand cafes. Still don't know the answer to that but we didn't want to leave!
So put on the wet raincoat again and back en route. We tried to reduce the overall distance by heading west of the Rhein to avoid some large bends in the river. The weather became somewhat drier with only the occasional shower. Not sure how it happened, but at one point we took a wrong turn and ended up going 14 km SW towards Alpen, rather than N towards Nijmegen. We arrived in Gelderen. It is Sunday here. None of the three hotels that we found are open and there didn't seem to be any alternatives, like a youth hostel, or a private house with rooms to let. As soon as we hit the town centre the heavens opened up, and the rain became torrential, almost biblical! Felt like we were in a tropical monsoon .... Still had to find somewhere to stay.
At the second hotel we tried, George's front tyre went flat. Another shard of glass. We could change the tyre inside the garage there, but were directed back towards the Ratskeller (Ratcellar) Hotel where we'd already tried earlier. Tried to make contact with the hotelier over the phone, this requires an international call as we still have a NZ chip, and we had to ask somebody what the number for Germany was (0049 should you ever need it). The Ratskeller hotelier would hang up on us as soon as we said that we didn't understand what she was trying to say in German, and did she understand any English?
So we headed back to another hotel we'd seen on the way in. Again a phone number because the place is shut on a Sunday. Luckily this hotelier could speak English. He turned up at the hotel, showed us where to park the bikes, gave us a key to the room and the hotel, told us to help ourselves to drinks from the fridge, breakfast at 7 am OK? Then he hopped on his bike and dissapeared!
So a weird day all told. And what is even more disapointing is that it felt like a good 70km ride, but however you figure it is seems that we only managed about
65 km, and 14 of that was essentially back tracking. Tomorrow it is off to Nijmegen, 46km north. If the weather holds, and the forecast is correct, and the tyres don't get punctures (or if we can replace them with Kevlar outers), and we actually go in the right direction then we actually might make Wolfheze a day earlier than we've booked.......
They have bucket fountains here too (Kleve), and they work just as well as the one in Wellington.
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