German Corner

The Rhine Cycle Path, Day Four:

Unfortunately, I suffered a major mechanical about seven and half miles into the second day of cycling, just outside a town called Spay. Possibly a misjudged reversal into a rest stop bike rack the previous day had put the rear wheel out (certainly it was around then that I started to make random clanging noises that subsequently proved to be down to a loose spoke) but whatever it was my derailler jammed into the back wheel and then sheared off completely when we straightened things out to get the wheel off. Luckily Spey has a railway station, so we carried the bits to that and caught a train to Koblenz, where we dropped everything off at the repair shop for diagnosis. They were pretty sure that they could repair the damage relatively quickly , provided the particular part needed to join everything to my resolutely English bike frame could be located so we went for a wander around Koblenz and down to the Deutsches Eck, where the Rhine and the Mosel meet. On further consideration it was looking more like a Thursday pick-up for the bike by this point so  we decided to continue by train and come back from Cologne, where we had a rest day at least, on Friday morning. Then we took the train to Remagen, tonight’s stop, and walked along the Rhine, past the remains of the infamous bridge, to our hotel at Kripp, on the outskirts. Later on, we got the ferry over the river to Linz – a town almost so picturesquely  Rheinish  as to be kitsch in places – and indulged in Spaghetti Eis in the Market Square before returning to our hotel restaurant for a very decent flammkuchen…