Grumpy Old Men On Bikes

That's right; with about 2030 miles on the clock we are back in Calais. Since our last report we have crossed our last country - Belgium. You can tell when you pass from the Netherlands into Belgium  because all the cycle paths turn to shite and cobbles make an unwelcome reappearance.  Belgium really is a nothing place.........here is a little test: Name a famous Belgian. If your answer is a fictional detective it doesn't count......see what I mean?  Name a great Belgian invention.  Moule frites is all very well but is isn't the Large Hadron Collider is it? Passing back into France almost felt like coming home.  Naturally everything was shut but even that brought a tear to my eye. Tonight we will drink our own weight in Leffe  (from the supermarket, I'm not a billionaire) and tomorrow we will take the boat back to Blighty.  There is a full English Breakfast with my name on it on board!

We have now had 2 full days trekking across Cloggland - 160  or so miles and we have not really had to share the road with motor vehicles AT ALL!  This is despite having passed through the centres on Utrecht and Rotterdam. The provision for cyclists is so far beyond anything we could dream of that it beggars belief.  Basically there is a completely parallel road network for cyclists; you can cycle from anywhere, to anywhere on dedicated  cycle paths.  Often these are two lane with their own central white lime and dedicated traffic lights, road signs and everything.  Bonus Tracks Funky Moped There are 2 flaws in the Dutch Cycle path system: 1/ Moped riders are allowed to use them.  'Suicidal' would be the best adjective to apply to their riding style. 2/  They also let schoolkids use them.  I have no problem with this in principle but the little pricks need to stop using both hands for texting and try steering ever...

We aren't actually in clogland yet but the border is just down the road. On The Road Again It wasn't hard to tell when we crossed from East to West Germany.  There is a small sign but the unmistakable clue was the start of a stretch of magnificent freshly layed tarmac.  It was possibly the smoothest bit of road I have ever cycled on and a huge raised finger to the East Germans and their crappy cobbles. We haven't seen a single cobble since then! Map of The Problematique Since leaving Prague we no longer have the Paneuropa Radweg to follow.  Instead we are following a route created using Google Maps.  For this there is a a 'cycling mode' which supposedly serves up nice cycle-friendly roads.......except someone on Google's mapping team has decided that all bikes are mountain bikes and that a cyclist likes nothing more than a bit of off-roading. Most of the time it works fine bit occassionaly a road peters out into a a vague line across a fie...

Dont worry....we are not in Russia, it just feels like it as we continue through the former East Germany.  Some banging tunes for you: Breakfast at Tiffany's Through extensive study I thought  I had worked out the breakfast rules for hotels in Germany: 2*/basic hotel - coffee, juice, cereal, bread, cheese, cold meats. 3*/mid range - as above plus scrambled eggs and maybe some anemic frankfurter-style sausages 4*/fancy - as above plus some other random hot items. Plus, of course, cucumber but don't get me started on that! On Wednesday we stayed in quite a fancy hotel just south of Potsdam and my hopes were high for breakfast.  Food becomes such a preoccupation on trips like this that I had spent virtually every waking moment from check-in anticipating the breakfast feast.  Huh!!!! It seems that even breakfast is sub-standard in the East. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos Thursday morning started with a 30 mile ride into Berlin where, it seem...

We have found local sports centres to a good source of evening sustenance.  Simple but plentiful food and modest prices.  Last night we went to a very 'local' sports hall where they have a rather nice custom.  As each person arrives or leaves they visit each table and rap twice with their knuckles and say hello or goodbye. At the end of our meal we exited and rather self-consciously did the rounds. It would be tempting to devote the rest of this entry to a further rant about the stupidity of cobbles and the Eastern Kraut's fondness for them.  Suffice to say that today did nothing to improve my opinion of cobbles or East Germans.  As for the assistant in the supermarket who ignored us as we waited at the checkout while she completed her stock take of the fruit & veg.........it seems that customer service is close behind tarmac in the list of civilised West German features that have yet to be implemented in the East. We have done a splendid 85 ...

Reunification my arse!  In West Germany everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) feels nearly new, well engineered and well maintained.  Not surprisingly people look affluent and happy.  In the East everything is.....err.....a bit shit, and the people look like they are sucking on lemoms. If you took someone from the Czech Republic, blindfolded them and dropped them in East Germany they would look around and the only thing they would notice is that the beer is more expensive.  To Angela Merkel I say this:  "In the 21st century little cubes of stone are NOT an acceptable road surfacing material.  Sort it out!!!" We did our big hill with barely a whimper but then the rain started and the wind picked up and we struggled with the weather all day.  Sometimes we got a wind assist but much of the time it was blowing straight from our left side with gusts up to 40mph.  The problem with this is that you get nicely set at a 15 degree lean, braced a...

Things I dislike about cycling in the Czech Republic: - it is quite hilly - the roads have been constructed entirely using cobbles - the drivers are mostly homicidal maniacs - villages are devoid of all useful services and generally pretty dismal Things I like about cycling in the Czech Republic: - the beer is very cheap So it's a big Czech thumbs up from me. Yesterday we cycled to Prague and if the nutter from Noth Korea is thinking of invading South Korea now would be a good time, as the entire population of Seoul is on the Charles Bridge clutching selfie sticks. By Czech standards Prague is an expensive city, but our hotel room cost £29......which is an indication of how far from the centre we were, how small the room was and how generally crappy everything was.  BUT, as I said, £29 so we were happy. Prior to Prague our journey has always had a southern and/or eastern component to it and we have enjoyed winds from the north/west the whole way.  L...

On the Border Time has passed since my last report and we are now just acrosss the border into the Czech Republic and in Plzen (Pilsen).  We are staying in the shadow of a sodding great brewery and I now discover that Pilsen is the original home of pilsner lager.  It is also the home of Budweiser......from the days when it was a proper beer and not American horse piss. It is easy to tell when you reach the Czech Republic because of so the hoardings advertising massage parlours, 'nightclubs' and casinos.  It seems that such things are not permitted in the mighty Federal Rebublic but freely available a few yards across the border. The Bed's Too Big Without You Last night we stayed in Weiden - a large but fairly crappy town.  Our hotel room (we have more or less given up on camping) was booked as a 'double' room with TWO large beds.  When we arrived we found our room had one bed.  We requested a room change but were told the mistake was ou...

Straight Lines We are mostly following the Paneuropa Radweg - more of a concept than an actual thing.  It stitches together a number of local bike routes, connected by stretches of road and the odd farmers field or forest track.  I had already modified the route in several places to suite our needs but, yesterday, a glaring opportunity presented itself.  The 77 mile day followed a chuffing great loop that incurred a 40 mile penalty compared with what the crows have to do.  So we became crows. As a result of the much shorter day we were able to do 25 of the following day's miles and get a bit ahead of schedule.  This is NOT cheating!!!!! The Fool On The Hill Today we had our 25 mile head start so had a 2nd shorter day and still managed to eat into tomorrow's mileage by a dozen or so.  We have done a measly 55 miles but they were hillier than a hilly thing.  With 12 days under our belts and no rest days, hills are becoming a bit of a nui...

When setting up an 'eat all you like' Chinese Buffet it is important to understand your market.  You need to create a graph with, on one axis, the number of expected customers, and on the other their likely hungryness.   For this second axis you need to set the upper and lower limits.  Perhaps for the lower limit 'teenage model preparing for her wedding' and for the upper limit, obviously, 'touring cyclist'. Yup, Chinese Buffet for tea last night.  We were really grown up and took the tram into the city centre like real people. Today was something of a rest day.....70 totally flat miles.  We rolled our panzers across the Rhine and, so far, our blitzkrieg is unopposed.  The sun has been out for most of the day and occasionally it has actually felt like a holiday.  We are camping tonight and have done the German thing and purchased a large cucumber for breakfast.  It is a rather shabby little site which seems to mainly accommod...

Forgive me Father, it is three days since my last confession. Sex and Drugs And Rock and Roll After steaks the size of our heads in Epernay, we struck out next morning for an 'easy' 70 miles to Bar Le Duc.  They turned out to be a bit less easy, not helped by an afternoon downpour, and we rolled into town at about 3:30 tired and ready for a 'lie down' (yes, I mean a cold beer). It turned out that it was music festival weekend and everywhere (especially the campsite) was packed with dreadlocked vermin.  We COULD have camped there but it would have involved drug taking, loud music and carnal relations with hairy French girls.  Now I like drugs and rock music as much as the next man but hirsute French girls are a bridge too far for me! So we got back on our bikes and did another 10 miles to a nice quiet village where we mended Neil's broken spoke  (I keep telling him he has too much gear but he won't listen) and had another steak...... which was a ...

Since the start of the trip I have had a series of seemingly unrelated issues with my back wheel.  This morning, during yet another round of fettling, I concluded it was knackered and had to go.  Luckily we were just a few miles from a Decathalon so off we popped. "Good morning, I need an 11 speed back wheel" I deliver in my finest French. After a brief scurry to the stock room the 'assistant' returns with a decidedly 10 speed looking wheel and says "voila". "Are you sure that is 11 speed?" I ask. "Mais oui, bien sur" replies the 'assistant'. I purchase the wheel and exit stage left......time passes. "Excuse me, this is a 10 speed wheel"  (you can see where this is going). "Non, onze vitesse!". I lay the wheel on the counter and start attaching oily cogs.  Une, deux, trois...........dix.  At this point the wheel is visibly full and cog ...