Grant and Barbara

Odyssey Day 36 Wesel to Arhem 51miles flat

Following the Rhine, the houses soon (in Germany) feel different. Just be a border thing. That didn’t exist: one moment the signs are in German, the next Dutch. Curtis are looking good: fresh crops or newly harvested hay.

Industry is never far away, especially from the river. We’re mainly on the flood defence embankments, a truly impressive scale of engineering for miles.

Giant hogweed, Shetland ponies are strange sights but not as half as strange as the life size statues adorning the town’s. The solar panels are different too! (Look closely at the photos),

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Germany, Odyssey

Odyssey Day 34 Koblenz to Cologne 65miles 300m

Another fine way to enter a city: Riverside cycle path to main bridge, turn left, stop. Taking in some fine architectural sites as well as a connection with Greece and Albania: a scrap yard. Everything ends somewhere.

A day spent following the Rhine through villages and the outskirts of Bonn. They know how to build solid bridges here. A key one is missing at Remargen: paused there to reflect on Jimmy’s experiences 74 years earlier and join in the aspiration the site has for peace. Queue a rant about Brexit.

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Getting hotter. Cycle traffic lighter though it is a Monday.

Odyssey

Odyssey Day 32 Heidelberg to Mainz

The mighty industrial Rhine starts to kick in. Takes me back to 3M days and regular visits to Mannheim. On a huge scale yet fits in and has modern feel.

Then back to rural fields with increasing vineyards. Statues dotted randomly including some with just a plinth.

It’s festival time in Mainz. I bumped into Jerry and Sherry from Cardiff having not met them for a good few years. Grand.

Off to Koblenz tomorrow.

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Odyssey Day 31 and Heidelberg

Feeling blessed. The room has both a Gideon Bible and a Mormon Book of Prayer.

The University Botanical Gardens are a pretty sanctuary and open on Corpus Christy, the public holiday. Reunited with frogs and their mating noises.

Friday and all is back to normal. Heidelberg feels a young town despite its antiquity. The University days back to 1400s, and still dominates. The Church in the market Square is old too, with links to the Lutherans (first time in ages George Wishart’s name has appeared). Wonderful stained glass and a great tower. The rotating perspex cross casts different light. Perhaps more eloquent than the heat of the Catholic-Protestant claim to the church. Until 1936 it was divided down the aisle by a partition.

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Tomorrow flatter again.

Germany, Odyssey, Uncategorized

Odyssey Day 30 Dillingen to Schwabisch-Hall

You really get a sense of Germany as a fertile bread basket in this area. Most fields are unfenced and with varied crops. We’re in Baden-Wurttemberg.

Spring flowers abound, we’re probably following then north. Today’s river is the Kucher which splits Schwabisch-Hall.

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This has a history of salt production. Today it’s more known for the pretty Alltstadt with St Michael’s Church in the square with the largest dry of steroids you’ll have seen to enter it. Also used as a stage: tonight they agree rehearsing “Everyman”, which looks a bundle of laughs.

It’s also twinned with Loughborough, which might explain the uk Telephone box.

Inside the church you read, as in Innsbruck, of the local Christians that opposed Hitler and were persecuted.