A long haul through Germany’s industrial heartland of the Ruhr and a mad dash across the flatlands of north-east Netherlands.
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Saturday 30 April 2022. Cologne to Nijmegan |174 km|
[Cold and cloudy; flat and well-formed paved cycle paths the whole way].
In the 150 km ride to the Dutch border I hardly saw the Rhine at all that the glossy EuroVelo 15 brochures say you’re supposed to be following : just mile after mile (no one says kilometer after kilometer do they?) of chemical factories and dreary built up suburbs, flat and straight.
I stopped at the Burger King in Moers at 12pm for a Whopper and a short ‘just-in-case’ 40-minute charge-up. Having the extra charge on board convinced me I could just about make it all the way to Nijmegan so I set the GPS destination accordingly and set sail.
It wasn’t much of a day for stopping to take photographs. The only places of note I can remember are Moers, Xanten (very nice) and Kalkar. I could say the scenery wasn’t photogenic, but really it was more me, just wanting to plod on and not risk getting off the bike too often because of all my aches and bruises. I actually did enjoy the ride as usual, just not got many pics to show for it.
Nijmegan is quite the bustling student town and I was super-excited about the prospect of staying there on a Saturday night. However the several hotels I tried thought otherwise andall declared they had no vacancy. Am I being paranoid or were they really full? Note to self: try to remember to book ahead.
There’s a campground a few kilometers out of town on the other side of the Rhine, so in desperation I rode over the bridge to check it out, even though the batteries had just konked out – so much for my short charge-up back in Moers, another 30 minutes would have made all the difference. A deviation for major levee repairs only a couple of hundred meters short of destination added a detour of several kilometers without power when I could tantalizingly see the camp, Camping Die Grote Altena just a few hundred metres away ‘over there’. That last 5km without battery nearly killed me.
My flat and grassy pitch was fine for €15.50, though it was in a bit of a hollow and you wouldn’t want to be stuck in there in any sort of heavy rain event. As it was, my bike sank down to the rims in the squishy wet turf, but I have a groundsheet so the tent didn’t suffer too much. A friendly busybody saw me struggling to get power out of my outlet and trotted over to show me the trick (the power stub I was next to didn’t actually work at all, and an extension cord to the next one along was hidden in the hedge).
The fancy campground Brasserie overlooking the Rhein/Rhine was the only choice for food, as the much cheaper ‘Waalterras’ cafe that belongs to the campground wasn’t open for the season yet, and I spent about 3-times the cost of the night’s accomodation on an excellent, but fairly simple, meal. It was packed too, and I had to wait a long time for a table.
Sunday 01 May 2022. Nijmegan to Rotterdam |126 km|
[A white-out kind of day (a stratus blanket), cold but not much wind]. Dutch-style glorious super-highway cycle path all the way.
I slept in until 8.30 and was feeling very sore in the knees and right-side ribs when I woke up. Maybe I went too far yesterday, I think. I could hardly walk, so I thought I’d be better off riding.
A big peloton of liveried-up cyclists came hurtling past towards me on the levee not long after I got going, and a bit further on I found a perfectly good banana lying in the middle of the road that one of them had dropped (I presume); I scoffed it down rightaway and thus, amply fortified, I soldiered on. Thanks for breakfast mate!
I relied on Ziggy’s GPS to get me to Rotterdam, which worked well in that wonderful maze of cycle streets, until a dreaded “Deviation!” at a place called Schalkwijk had me off in the wrong direction and a wasted 6km of effort (as you can plainly see by the curious finger-pointing gesture the track makes on the map above). Once again, with Ziggy calling the shots I missed following the Rhine altogether from about halfway to Rotterdam.
Accommodation-wise, Rotterdam too seemed to be booked solid; however, I did manage to snaffle a cancellation room at the Holiday Inn Express Rotterdam Central (the guy behind me in the check-in didn’t have a booking either and he missed out). Bed and breakfast cost a whopping €150, and the breakfast was lousy!
I had a good look around downtown, and a nice poké bowl dinner, but nothing special happened. Would I even tell you if it did? ‘course I would!
Monday 02 May 2022. Rotterdam to Hook of Holland |33 km|
[The day was clear, cold and very windy from the north].
The ferry wasn’t till late evening, so I managed to get a late check-out at the Holiday Inn and just hung about resting till 1.00pm. I did go out into the cold and squally weather to do some window-shopping for cycling gear but most of the stores were closed anyway.
The short ride past all the massive petrochemical refineries to the ferry terminal at Hook of Holland was uneventful (but I allways get a kick of wonderment out of it) and by the time I’d checked in at Stena Line at 3.45 pm and bought a ticket in a 2-berth cabin for €202, I was second-in-line at the gate.
Then it was a long and boring wait watching the 5 lanes gradually fill up behind me until we began boarding at 7.00pm.
The three Lithuanian guys (Latvian? Slovakian?, Hungarian, maybe? They did tell me, but I forget) in the white van that pulled up alongside me were a real hoot. They all, including the driver, got absolutely smashed drinking Slivovitz (plum brandy) while eating enormous quantities of home-packed goodies – I guess they had to get rid of it all before English customs. They were friendly enough, and we tried to have conversations, since the driver could speak a little English, although he couldn’t really understand my Australian version of it. Anyway they laughed a lot every time he translated. They were off to England fruit-picking and I know they made it on board okay because I saw them staggering around on the ferry later.
I was first on board (customs waved me straight through) and the impressively efficient polish-sounding deck hands had the bike safely lashed down in seconds and I was soon up on deck 11 to drop my hand-luggage off in the cabin, and then up on promenade Deck 12 to watch the departure activities.
I had a nice 2-berth outer cabin with a porthole and a view (cabin #11324) all to myself for the entire trip. The fare included snacks of crisps and nuts as well as a bottle each of beer, wine (mini-bottle only) and orange juice from the mini-bar. I definitely should have foregone the over-priced accommodation in Rotterdam last night and gone straight to the ferry yesterday. Next time.
– ends –
2022 in Europe so far: 2,200 km in 22 days (20 days of cycling)
Nights in hotel 10
Nights in tent 12
New bike defects/ repairs:
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- 2 punctures rear, 4 punctures front.
- 2 new tubes bought (Montelimar).
- Rohloff oil change (Toulouse)
- Repairs to rear kickstand (Toulouse)
- Two new Ortlieb Front Roller panniers (€140)
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