Back To SoloI left Heidelberg and I was back to being alone. This time, there wasn't a friend I was riding to, but I had Couchsurfing prospects so I didn't really mind. I barely remember the first day and I didn't cover much ground. I was pretty sleepy all day so I thought it would be good to find a place to camp pretty early on and just ill until I could put up my tent and sleep. As it transpired, the area I was in at around 6pm wasn't at all conducive to rough camping. Eventually I got to the stage where I was too tired to care and just camped behind a slight mound but still very much in view of the road. I was expecting company all night and could constantly hear animals near my tent. At about 9 I decided that roughing it when I was with someone was fine, but roughing it alone just wasn't fun. I'm not so full of pride as to just keep doing it regardless, so I contacted someone about 150km away in Bad Salzungen and got a response almost immediately. As I was camping in such a visible spot, I was up at 5.30 and on the road 45 minutes later, which meant I had time to cover the ground (150km is a big day for me). It was really cold that night so I had to put in the headphones and pump it to warm up. Somehow I covered a lot of distance and made it to Bad Salzungen by about 6pm. I met Mikhail the Russian doctor and his wife, the Russian doctor. As I was pretty tired I again wasn't the most fun guest, but they understood. We spoke about Russia, books, gaming and of course, energy. An Energetic InterludeThere are a lot of wind turbines in Germany, functional and under construction. This makes me feel good. They are pretty. They are clean. They are not noisey. There are also nuclear power plants here. I was talking to Kyle about Germany shutting down their power stations and how they have some (I think 16) in England but people don't really know about them. I mentioned that there were none in Australia and he was shocked. I guess you just use solar he said. Nope. When I got to Mikhail in Bad Salzungen, we spoke about a similar thing. He ask what we use if we don't use nuclear. I said coal. His response was literally "it's barbaric". Yep. Air quality is such a problem in China that they are starting to pump out nuclear power plants. It makes sense. Australia is embarrassing. People over here find something that is a good idea and they do it. We just oppose all change based on nothing factual, reasonable or scientific. Nuclear is not the solution. It is the stopgap we need in place of coal. Back To The StoryThe day I left Bad Sulzungen was a public holiday. I thought it was just a regular public holiday. I have since been informed that it was "Man's Day" where the guys get drunk and abuse their women. I didn't see much of the abuse, but there was certainly a lot of drinking. A national park I passed through was bursting with people, all had a beer in hand. I made the 115km to Ostramondra which is a small town in the middle of nowhere by about 6pm (again), an hour earlier than expected by my Couchsurfing host. It go cold. Twice I had to leave town to have a pee. Eventually I asked Meret to call the host to see what was happening. At 9.15 I heard a ruckus. Along the street comes a white horse painted like a rainbow being cajoled by three small hunting dogs, towing a cart with some super drunk people in it. Mission to get to bed early failed. The next day it took me an hour to find somewhere to buy food and by the end of the short day I was pretty knackered. This is getting monotonous for me writing as well as you reading but it's all I can do at the moment. As it stands, I am now in Halle Couchsurfing for two nights so I get a rest day. Also I've changed plans to go to Berlin first, then Dresden.
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Partner In Crime Riding with someone is really different to cycling alone. While I was staying with Jennie, I met an English guy called Kyle who was staying with Jennie's friend Beth via Warm Showers. He is cycling to Istanbul via a different route to me, but the next few days of our journey were in the same direction so we decided to ride together. Kyle had been rough camping along the way, which was something I wanted to start doing. We spoke a bit about the merit of the "no camping" rules and concluded that there are problems which can arise if people are allowed to camp anywhere, but they would usually only become relevant if people were in the same place for a few days. There is a Scandanavian country I can't remember in which you can camp anywhere, but only for one night in the same place. I like this rule. Kyle left Maastricht the day before me so I met him outside Monschau which was about 60km from Maastricht. We aimed to keep cycling until around dusk, then find somewhere to camp. Along the way we saw many wind turbines being constructed. Germany plans to decomission all it's nuclear power plants by 2022, and while it's great that these turbines are going up, they are also constructing new coal power plants to make up the gap. Just after a place called Blankenheim, the cycle path veered off the road in to the woods and we thought we could find a nice spot to camp. I think we were a bit lucky that there was such an ideal place not far from the path and I think I would have camped there or somewhere nearby even if I was alone, but it was nice to have someone who had done this before to confirm the suitability. The next day we aimed for Koblenz. There were a few climbs and a lot of beautiful scenery. It was difficult to look at all the beauty and not take photos of everything. I imagine living there would be similar to living in Hobart where every now and then you look up at the mountain and think wow, that actually looks amazing. As we reached the top of a hill on a highway, we pulled over to check the map for a road with less traffic. There was caravan up there containing a scantily clad female. Years ago when cycling in Spain with Tom, there were girls in bikinis in the middle of nowhere on the highways and it took too much naive thinking time to realise they were prostitutes. What a horrible life. We made it through to Koblenz where we met the Rhein. She was fat and fast from the mountain rains. We were to follow the river well in to the next day, but it was getting dark and had not seen a nice place to camp for a while. We carried on for a bit before deciding on a well hidden spot only a few metres from the path. The next day we set off fairly early and followed the river pretty much all day. The entire way was scenic and my quickly shot and poorly planned photos don't even start to do it justice. There are quite long sections of the cycle path that are surrounded by people's remote gardens. They pretty much look like a front or back yard, but the house is somewhere else. We found a few llikely places to camp just outside of Mainz and picked one fairly arbitrarily. We were totally settled and discussing how nice it was to have camp all set up while it's still light with little to no chance of being disturbed by people, when I noticed some deer wandering through the woods, obscured slightly by branches and undergrowth. We were in a nature reserve, so it made sense for wildlife to be around. I observed that our presence didn't startle them, which I guess meant they were pretty tame. As they came closer, Kyle remarked that they weren't deer, but in fact wild boar. We both promptly decorated our smalls and jumped up trees. The pigs weren't too bothered with our presence and eventually meandered away, but that did not mark the end of our discussion regarding their probable return during the night to relieve us of our food. The stressful early night turned in to fifteen minutes of rearraging the camp to prevent boar attack. As it transpired, the boars weren't interested in us at all and it was a good night's sleep. After getting a bit lost on cycle paths once we left the guidance of the Rhein, we hit highway 3 and powered south to Heidelberg. I met a German girl called Meret when I was doing Workaway in southern France which is why this was a significant stop on the trip. It's always good to see a town with locals, and the people living in her flat were so friendly that it seemed like I was visiting a group of old friends.
Heidelberg is a similar size to Hobart and for me had a similar feel because of the surrounding mountains. There was a buzzing lawn down by the Neckar which was filled with ball sports, barbecues and drinking. I'm about to head down there now to eat a disgusting amount of brat and enjoy some good times with Meret and probably a whole bunch more Class A Germans. Tomorrow morning, I set out to Dresden. Hopefully the Tralfamadorians don't pick me up on the way. Fast StartDay one didn't have much room for mistakes. I had booked the Eurotunnel Cycle Service, for 3.30pm and couldn't be late. I departed at around 6am and within the first hour I already needed to use a cable tie. The head on one of the bolts on the front rack was (I thought) just big enough to do it's job but after a bit of jolting, it had come loose. Nothing was open, so the cable tie would have to hold up for a while. Before long I was once again heading in to the frigid morning. The day was cold and clear which made for great riding conditions. I made it all the way to Ashford before I was confident that I could eat lunch without a worry that I wouldn't make it. From there it was a short hop to Folkestone where my mood was good. I did a few bits of shopping in Calais then set out to hopefully find somewhere to camp for the night. I was still a bit jet-lagged having only been in Europe for five days. As the afternoon wore on I started to realise that finding somewhere discreet to camp wouldn't be as easy as I thought. This was significant because it was the first night and I figured this might set the tone for the trip. I was tired enough to sleep by 6pm, but there were still a few hours before the sun would go down and I could pitch my tent. I think if I was a bit more in the mood of "screw it, here will do", I would have been ok, but all I could see happening was me getting caught. After stopping to chat with locals at various points, I decided the only thing for it was to stop at a camp ground. While it was only 8 euros for the night, that would be a whole lot of money if I were to do it for the entire trip. I pitched my tent for the first time to discover it wasn't as big as I had hoped, locked up my and lay down, too exhausted to read, write or even eat that much. Same ProblemsI decided that I wanted to get to Ghent by the end of the second day. I was just using my phone for navigation but I hadn't had a WiFi connection in a while so the detail was poor as I got close to Ghent. I thought my English SIM would work abroad for a few days until I ran out of credit (this is what had previously happened), but as it turned out that wasn't the case. One thing to note about rural Belgium is that it is very smelly in the west. There is a lot of organic farming so rotting food was being used as fertiliser. Also on the farming note, there were literally hundreds of tractors that went past me on the road, sometimes towing tractor sized trailers. Also, all the roadkill was of birds. I'm not sure why that's significant, but I decided it is. After Tielt, the roads started getting really bad and I knew that the sounds coming from my front rack meant damage was being done. There wasn't much I could do in the moment, so I just put it on the list as another thing which had not gone as I hoped. As the day wore on I began stressing again about where I was going to sleep. My offline map was really poor quality about 15km out from Ghent so I needed to stop somewhere for WiFi. I was pretty much ready to quit looking for a random place to pitch and take the cop out campground option. Loneliness was setting in pretty hard and as I pushed my way along, I thought of all the other options available to me than cycling all the way around Europe by myself. I was beginning to think that this is what my trip would be and the majestic days lounging around in a copse of woods next to a river were simply a pipe dream. My experience at Donza changed everything (and can be found here). A New OutlookWith a full stomach and a good attitude, I positively flew along the road towards Leuven. The ever-present bumpy roads seemed to be less of a problem (with my headphones in) and I knew it was only 180 more kilometres until I was with Jennie. I rolled in to Leuven feeling lucky and sat down at a bar to use the WiFi. I contacted all the Couchsurfing hosts in the city and sipped a beer with some ex-locals while waiting for a response. I ended up finding a room with a guy called Jan within only a few minutes. The room was nice and he was chilled out and understanding of the fact that I was knackered. It was nice to once again sleep in a bed. The next day I had a fair bit of time to enjoy the ride because I was aiming to get to Maastricht by 4pm. The orchards were blossoming which (in the least floggerish way possible) was really pretty. Tongeren is the oldest city in Belgium and had a pretty cool church and the sun came out just in time for a delicious tuna mayo baguette. The last 17km to Maastricht flew by because by this time I was pretty excited to see Jennie. MaastrichtThe change as I crossed La Meuse (a river) in to The Netherlands was dramatic. The road instantly became more cycle friendly and the trees and buildings around the road made me feel welcome. I got a little bit lost on the way to Jennie's house, but arrived at the door at exactly the same time she did. What luck! Smelly Viktor help with taking my stuff up the three flights of stairs and all of a sudden I wasn't living out of my bike. I think I've decided that what happens when I'm visiting friends is the same as my normal life has been in London, Montpellier or Melbourne. I probably could blog about it, but it's just everyday life. Besides, some memories are best left for the people in them. |
Chris JonesJust a guy going for a bit of a documented ride. Archives
May 2018
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