August 6, 2014
Cologne to Remagen: A relaxing day
It was a really lovely trouble free ride today. I think that our brains must be connecting as we get over jet lag. We were away before eight and at this time it is beautifully cool with people resupplying all the various food outlets so that the tourists can start another feeding frenzy. We picked up delicious rolls for our lunch and then we were down to the Rhine to the now perfectly marked path. It was beautiful all the way until about 30km we came to a huge industrial area at Wesseling however the route wound us through this and it was a suprise to come to the actual town and find that it was a very pleasant little town where we got a good cup of coffee.
Our next stop was Bonn. There were a number of things we wanted to accomplish there and this was done with ease. Firstly we needed to find a bike shop as Kens speedo had stopped working. We found VeloCity. Not only did it have the most amazing array of bikes of all sorts it had extremely skilled mechanics. Our man knew the exact workings of Kens computer and in a short time was able to get it to work perfectly. The next item on the agenda was to find the house where Beethoven was born which we did with relative ease. On the way we passed through the market square which had wonderful looking food for sale and we bought plums and apricots for our lunch. The only thing left was to find the graves of Clara and Robert Schuman but this proved to hard. Bonn is indeed a lovely city and we really would have liked to stay there but it was too early in the day to stop but we had had a very pleasant hour or so there.
On we pressed and it was still early when we came to our goal for the day so there was an executive decision to go on to Remagard. Here was the only Rhine bridge captured intact by the advancing allied troops in 1944. It however had been weakened and collapsed about 10days later. The towers remain on each side and the one on the Western side contains a peace museum which we will visit on our way out of town tomorrow.
Today's ride: 63 km (39 miles)
Total: 138 km (86 miles)
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