June 15, 2018

 Another day on the Rhine route \”Magical Mystery Tour\”.

After an excellent breakfast at the hotel we cycled through the Town of Kaiserswerth to take some photos. We spotted this stone work on the side of a building.  Kaiserswerth was a very nice historic Town with lots of small boutique shops, good restaurants and bars.

We started of well and then it all went to hell in a hand basket when we “almost” got through Dusseldorf.

Dusseldorf was a really interesting City and clean. There were some older buildings and some funky new ones. The cycle path was easy to follow and took you through the downtown, if you wanted to go into the centre of the Old City. We didn’t so we carried on following the route.

Along the waterfront were lots of bars where you could sit and meet friends etc. It was a really nice area.

After the waterfront area and the bars we carried along the old harbor area. When the city decided to revitalize this area it invited famous architects to design the buildings.

Then it all went pear-shaped.  This how we eventually got out of the City.

We made another couple of errors, and our route which should have been about 67 kms ended up being 79.9.

This is not an error it is part of the actual route. The little red bike sign directed us along this path.  An overgrown path with loaded panniers was not fun.

We are spending two nights in Cologne. We have to get Ralf’s garmin fixed and/or the phone set up. These deviations are getting ridiculous.  Today we both said that we enjoyed the cycle routes in France more than the ones in Germany.

Although it was frustrating again today, there were some nice parts of the day. We spotted these beautiful horses taking people for a ride from the local brewery. They had a keg of beer on the back and were really enjoying themselves.

We were also shown the way by a couple of cyclists who were heading south down the Rhine as well – credit card touring. They both had small back-packs on, which carried a change of clothes and not much else.

We knew there was going to be a bit of a deviation around Leverkussen and that is when the two cyclists helped us around the deviation and told us the way to get around the Bayer Chemical plant. One of them spoke good English and told us that if we stayed on this side of the river we would have to get around Bayer, if we crossed the river we would have to get around the Ford Plant. We knew we had to be on this side of the river for the campsite. The Bayer plant is enormous. In a straight line it was 3 kms before we passed all the gates and various entrances/exists. Approximately 37,000 people work at Bayer in Germany. We didn’t think it was a good idea to take photos of the plant.

Eventually, we spotted the twin towers of the Cologne Cathedral.  I knew we had about 6 kms to go to the campsite.

The weather was good today. Slightly overcast with a little bit of sun and for the most part a tail wind.

We are staying in the Koln City Camping Park about 6 kms from the downtown. It cost E8 per person and E4 for electricity and we pay 0.50 cents for a shower for 3 minutes. I can’t take a shower in 3 minutes, it takes me 4 minutes so I have to waste water.

It’s a nice clean campsite and the lady on reception is very helpful.

Another cyclist showed up, he is from Holland.  He was complaining about the poor signage.  He said that he hadn\’t seen one sign today directing him.  Fortunately, for him he has a gps with maps downloaded.

No windmills today.

Looking forward to a good nights sleep, although the campsite is filling up with a lot of tents and camper-vans.