Long time, no internet cafe

Back again. We didn't fall in a canal and drown, I just haven't visited an internet cafe for a while. Sometimes they haven't been easy to find, but mostly I just couldn't be buggered.

Here's there briefest of summaries since the last post (sorry no pictures... forgot to bring camera):
July 19: Ride from Cologne to Dusseldorf (60km)
July 20: Train from Dusseldorf to Amsterdam (2 changes)
July 21: Amsterdam city museum, Tullip museum, Rijksmuseum.
July 22: Ride to Aalsmeer (20km)
July 23: Visit to huge flower market in Aalsmeer. Ride to Monster (southern Netherlands coast) Very wet and windy (75km).
July 24: Ride to Delft. Delft pottery museum and stores. (45km)
July 25: Ride to Rotterdam (30km), rented car and drove to Waterloo (Belgium)
July 26: Battle of Waterloo Museums, drive to Paris and dropped off car after navigating through crazy Paris traffic. This is a city where police are often required at intersections to remind the drivers to obey the signals.
July 27: The Louvre
July 28: Paris Antique Markets
July 29: Tour de France last stage
July 30: The Louvre, Des Invilades
July 31: Eiffel Tower, Arc De Triomphe, shopping

The Rhein and Mosel

Long time, no blog. Getting difficult to find internet cafes or the time to visit one, but the tour is going great and we are having lots of fun (except when feeling the effects of hard work on the bike!!!). So here's what we have been doing since last connection with the www:

July 9th

We spent the day exploring Mainz, but were unable to see any museums since it was a Monday.

July 10th

The weather still hadn't cleared up completely so we decided we would catch a train to Trier on the Mosel river. This meant that we missed out on riding some of the Rhein, but we needed to make up some time. We took a regional train to Koblenz and then changed to another to Trier. The regional trains are not that quick, but they are cheaper and easier to get our bike on. After ariving in Trier we set up camp at the local campingplatz and explored the city for a bit.

July 11th

We spent the day in Trier, visiting some of the attractions, including the Karl Marx House (where he was born), the toy museum, the Stadtmuseum (city museum) and the Porta Nigra (Black Gate - from when Trier was a roman city).

July 12th

With fine weather we got back on the bike, riding from Trier to Reil along the Mosel. The steep hill sides of the river valley were mostly covered with vinyards, like some parts of the Rhein and Neckar valleys were. Reil was just the small town that we stopped at after deciding we couldn't go any further (plus it had a REAL campingplatz; with a biergarten).

105km.

July 13th

From Reil we rode to Cochem; a touristy town on the Mosel that we spent the afternoon in.
50km

July 14th

Getting very warm... we rode to Remagen on the Rhein, via Koblenz (where the Mosel meets the Rhein). We had planned to stay at Remagen because there was a pool near the campsite, but as it turned out we were too late and it had closed by the time we got there. :-(

97km

July 15th

Another day on the bike: We decided not to stop in Bonn so as to make up some more ground, and so went through to Cologne. It was a very hot day (37°C) and we were very exhausted when we got to the hotel we stayed at, 10km North of Cologne (in Leverkusen). We immediately went to the local pool to cool down.

80km

July 16th

Rest day. We investigated Cologne, but again we were in a city on a Monday, so no museums. We didn't realize this at the time because we had managed to lose track of what day of the week it was. We must be on holiday.

July 17th

Visited a few attractions in Cologne:

• Schokolatden (chocolate) Museum
• Römisch-Germanisches Museum
• Wallraf-Richartz-Museum (worlds finest collection of 13th-19th century art)
• Kölner Dom (largest cathedral in Germany).

Now for the REAL tour

We have now started our tandem bicycle journey. After saying goodbye to Dani, Jochen and Sarah, we started out on our journey. We have generally been following bike trails identified in cycling specific maps that we bought from a bookshop in Stuttgart. The trails are also well signposted along the way, and are a combination of pedestrian/bike tracks, quiet single lane bitumen or paved roads, or unfinised vehicular tracks. Sometimes we have been taken through back streets of small towns, and once we rode on a section that seemed to have been built by the Romans (very bumpy). Since we have been riding near the Rhein and Neckar Rivers, many of the tracks have been on top of dikes. The bike has been going well, and our baggage has not proved too much of a strain (although we haven't encountered any real hills yet).

A summary of the bike tour so far:

July 4th.

Left Weinstadt and followed the Rems river to the Neckar north of Stuttgart. We stopped at Ingersheim for lunch and then rode on to Neckarsulm (just north of Heilbronn) to camp for the night. The route today was very winding and probably twice the straight line distance. We experienced lots of intermitant rain, and it was hard to know what the weather was going to do. 85km.

July 5th.

Started out hoping to reach Heidelburg, but when the rain started things slowed down. A heavy lightning storm hit us at one point, but fortunately we had a railway bridge to hide under. We made our way to Neckagerach where we gave up for the day and put the tent up in the rain. It rained nearly all day.
40km.

July 6th.

We woke up to more rain. We waited for a while in hope of the weather changing, but eventually decided to pack up and leave when we had a short break in the rain. We caught a bike ferry across the Neckar with many other touring cyclists at one point, and the rain started to clear up. Unfortunately most of the tracks we were following were dirt trails under tree cover, and so they weren't drying up. We, the bike and the trailer ended up getting pretty muddy. We even encountered a downed tree over the track that we had to carry the bike over - it seemed something didn't want us to get Heidelburg. We eventually arrived at a nice camping ground in Heidelburg.
40km.

July 7th.

A day off the bike. We explored the city of Heidelburg, including the large castle overlooking the town. We had spatzel and bier on the royal mile and enjoyed the nice weather.
20km (walking).

July 8th.

At the campsite in Heidelburg we met a well travelled Dutchman who was also travelling to Holland by bike. We left the campsite and immediately ran into issues as there was a wheelchair/handbike marathon race in Heidelburg. We travelled to Mannheim and joined up with the Rhein, then headed north and met with some cyclists that guided us to a ferry we needed to use. When we arrived the ferry was stopped for lunch, so we did too since there was a restaurant just there. The Dutchman we met earlier was also at the restaurant.
Once we got going again we often met up with the Dutchman along the way. He gave us a lot of advice with many useful shortcuts. We had a flat on the back wheel of the tandem - some glass we had picked up somewhere. We eventually caught up with the Dutchman again and rode the rest of the way to a campsite at Mainz. The biergarten was visited enthusiastically after a long day of riding.
110km.

Stuttgart and the Black Forrest

We are staying with Dani, Jochen and Sarah near Stuttgart. They have been wonderful hosts and have shown us some of Stuttgart and taken us for a drive in the Black Forrest.

We visited the Stuttgart tower where we had views of Stuttgart and surrounding hills.

In the black forrest we visited a glass blowing studio and museum, where Rebekah helped create a vase of her own. We also visited a open air museam called the Schwazwald Freilicht Museum (Black Forrest Open-air Museum - a traditional farming village from 1517) and the largest cuckoo clock in the world!

High Speed Train Travel

On Wednesday Rebekah and I caught a LNER train from Stirling to London. The train had to slow down in some section because of the widespread flooding that had occurred. We saw some places where the water was nearly up to the tracks. It was lucky for us we had not tried to travel two days earlier, when the trains were cancelled due to the flooding.

We had a quick stay in London, checking out a couple of sights on Thursday, and departed early on Friday on the Eurostar train to Paris. The Eurostar uses the Chunnel (tunnel under the English Channel), and is one of the fastest trains in Europe. The journey took about 3 hours.

From Paris we travelled for a bit over 3 hours to Stuttgart on a TGV train. The GPS said that it got to over 320km/h.

After arriving in Stuttgart we got on one last train; A S-Bahn train (city/suburban train). This took us to Beutelsbach, which is the closest station to the house of Rebekahs relatives Dani and Jochen and their 16 month old daughter Sarah. They welcomed us at the station and we have enjoyed staying with them since.

A bit of a catch up

Edinburgh

On Monday we caught the train into Edinburgh. We visited Edinburgh Castle, which was quite impressive. I found the two military museums within the castle for the Scots Greys heavy cavalry and Highlander infantry very interesting. One of the artifacts on show was the standard from the French 45th Line Regiment that the Scots Greys had captured at The Battle of Waterloo (1815).
After leaving the castle we walked down the Royal Mile to Holyroodhouse, where we took in an exhibition of sketchings by naturalists in history. The sketches included subjects of all sorts of flora and fauna, and were extremely detailed. We were able to get right up to all the sketches to take in all the detail, including some by De Vinci himself.

Doune

Yesterday we got the bike out of it's packing and assembled it so that we could ride out to Doune. The main purpose of this trip was to visit Doune Castle. The castle was used for Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which is of course why we decided to visit it, but I'm sure we would have greatly enjoyed our visit to the castle even if it had not been part of The Movie.
We departed from David and Cecilias late morning and rode into a head wind the whole way to Doune. The road had one lane each way but the lanes weren't very wide and there was no shoulder so it was a little scary when trucks and buses passed. Drivers were not keen on waiting and managed to somehow get passed us with oncoming traffic.

Once we got to the township of Doune, we rode straight down to the Castle. There were few visitors so we were able to explore the castle by ourselves most of the time. We climbed up and down many spiral stair cases, and had to be careful coming down because the stone steps were so worn. We were a little disappointed when we didn't find any large wooden rabbits or catapults for hurling cows over the wall.

Our ride back to stirling was a little quicker with a nice tailwind, and we got back in time to attend...

Cutting Down The Tapestry

Last night we witnessed the cutting down of a beautiful large tapestry that had just been completed at Stirling Castle. The tapestry is one of a set of seven replica medieval tapestries to be woven for Stirling Castle. The tapestries tell the story of The Hunt of the Unicorn, and will be hung in the Royal Palace as part of the restoration of Stirling Castle.
The tapestry that was cut down last night is "The Unicorn is killed and Brought to the Castle" and Cecilia has been working on it with other weavers since 2005. We felt very privileged to be able to attend the ceremony and be able to see the tapestry as a whole. Since the tapesty has been rolled up on the loom all the time whilst it was being worked on, this was the first time anyone had seen the whole thing together.

We had an interesting conversation with one of the Stirling Castle stewards later on in the evening. He has an interest in historic costumes and reenactments, and he descibed some of the events and injuries he has witnessed. An interesting observation was that a Welsh ambulance will attend the medieval reenactments, including those in Scotland, because the Welsh ambulance officers are skilled in the removal of armour from injured combatants!

To London we go...

The Battle of Bannockburn

Yesterday Bek and I watched the Battle of Bannockburn (it was only a reenactment). The battle was between the Scottish army of Robert the Bruce and the English army of Edward II.
The Scots won (again), spurred on by the home crowd support. Some English spectators had made the journey to see the battle, but their cheers were drowned out by those of the locals.

There was a micophoned commentator at the battle who at one point asked whether any spectators had come from different loations to watch the battle. He asked if people had come from Bannockburn, Stirling, Glasgow, England, Germany, France, etc, and each group shouted out when they were called. We didn't admit to having come from America and felt we didn't need to yell out since Australia wasn't mentioned. This may have been a good thing because the two guys that admitted coming from France received a lot of flak, even though French soldiers had apparently fought on both sides.

Some of the participants of the battle seemed to have trouble with the dying part. Many blows that looked deadly had no effect, and many a soldier who fell, rose again. They must have only been "flesh wounds".