Day 11: Duisburg to Arnhem

This was a long but great day. More bridges, the second last border, great weather, fabulous cycling infrastucture. Long distance cycling doesn’t really get better than this.

The Mercure in Duisburg was absolutely fine. Everything worked apart from a rickety old lift and the breakfast was pure four-star-hotel-breakfast-kit.

Early morning in Duisburg.

Unsurprisingly given it was 8am on a Sunday morning, the streets were quiet and easy to traverse. Duisburg is a very…neat…place. Nice roads, tidy little apartment blocks and big wide shopping streets. Of course, this is due to the fact that it has been rebuilt from scratch. Sitting as it does at the confluence of the Rhine and the Ruhr, it was a prime engineering and manufacturing hub for Germany and thus was a prime target for Allied bombing. Over 80% of the entire city was reduced to rubble To put that in perspective, after the Hiroshima nuclear bombing, it was estimated that 70% of the city was destroyed and the casualty toll in Duisburg was considerably higher than in Hiroshima — although admittedly over 4 years rather than in one horrific instant. But Duisburg has done pretty well.

I had rather foolishly said that we had crossed the Rhine for the final time yesterday. One would think that somebody who spent literally days working on each day’s routes wouldn’t make a rookie error like that.

We crossed the Rhur and then crossed the Rhine once more.

Look, you said we weren’t going to cross this bloody river again.

This section wasn’t the prettiest part of the route.

Very much Mordor am Rhein to be honest.

Before long, we were out of the heavy industry doughnut and back into the countryside. However, there was the presence of heavy industry on the horizon for scores of kilometres as we rolled north and west.

Not the best cycle path but very much “The Shire with Mordor on the horizon”.

I will have to do a whole blog post detailing how Dr T has managed to produce six or seven different off-the-bike outfits out of a 14 litre bean on the back of her bike. I have managed to produce one known as “green t-shirt I once got free with a purchase paired with terrible Craghopper trousers”.  It's a mystery indeed.

Not only has Dr T done well with off-the-bike couture but it appears there was also space for a change of cycling top in the tiny bean.

No photos of the new cycle kit!

The route wriggled its way along the western side of the Rhine. Mostly below the dykes (or Damm) which are there to hold back the floodwaters in extremis. According to the turn by turn notifications on my Garmin, approximately 50% of our entire route in Germany has been on either a Rheinstraße or a Dammstraße.

Despite the looming presence of chemical factories in the distance, it was really very rural. Thrifty farmers were grazing sheep in temporary electric-fenced fields on the dykes. I would guess that this is some sort of common land but maybe not. They were awfully healthy and clean looking sheep.

Nice grazing if you can get it.

We’ve seen a lot of bridges on this trip. Rather like gravel factories, BMW Z8s and amusingly named towns, one does start to get a bit obsessed with them.

There are the box girder rail bridges that were probably thrown up after the war and then, as the car started to dominate travel, there are lots of really very nice bridges for cars.

This, in particular, seemed to be a very graceful design and is used frequently.

The whole area we were cycling through is a nature reserve constructed around the polders which are used for flood management. They are wildlife refuges and there were a lot of blokes in camo-gear sporting very high quality camera gear.

It’s like the Serengeti here.

We stopped at a nature reserve café run by a very bubbly Indian woman who served us apple cake and full-fat cokes. She was so happy to speak in English and her lilting Indian pronunciation was a real reminder of home.

Suitably fortified with apple cake and coke we continued along the endless dyke top paths. None of them were long and straight enough to be outright boring but we had definitely seen enough of birds and other cyclists.

Still on dykes, still pretending to have fun and me getting hairier and hairier.

In this part of Germany, a lot of cycling is on brick paving rather than tarmac. After around 1,300 km of cycling, one gets very attuned to the quality of the surface you’re riding on. The brick paving shown in the photo above isn’t great in that it tends to impart regular and irritating impact on one’s hands and soft tissues. As two people who cycle around Cambridge on the pot-holed paths masquerading as roads, we weren’t complaining but we were looking forward to some tarmac.

In the distance, this wonderfully elegant bridge appeared. This really would be our final crossing of the Rhine. However, due to a weird German polyp which juts over the Rhine at this point we weren’t going to be in country number six for a while.

A lovely bridge…sorry for the bridge thing.

At the centre of the graceful arch, I stopped for a picture.

All of Germany in behind us.

In the photo, there is a massive factory, a cute village, miles of countryside and the Rhine. Effectively the four defining features of the German leg of our journey. We have spent the majority of the time on this trip in Germany. There’s often articles in high-end travel magazines entitled “Germany, the under-appreciated jewel in Europe’s tourism crown” and, in some ways, they’re right. It’s varied and, in places, beautiful. It’s never boring — especially if you like industrial architecture. The cities have their distinctive vibe and are always interesting.

Most importantly, every single person we met — whether or not in a hotel or on the route — was unfailingly cheerful and helpful. Out of the last four long distance self-supported bike rides I’ve done, three of them involved significant time in Germany. I know, like every country, Germany is facing social and economic challenges but, given the history of both WW2 and reunification, it’s a surprisingly “together” country. It’s probably a sign of age but we both loved the orderedly understated competence that exudes from just about everywhere and everyone.

It’s time, finally, to cross the Rhine for the last time and say a sad goodbye to Germany.

Very soon after dropping down into the little German polyp which sticks over the Rhine, we were in forests again and rolling along enjoying the countryside.

There’s a giant petrochemical works about 50m from here.

There was 35km to go and we were getting tired. A suspiciously quiet bike path and road led us to a set of roadworks which entirely blocked my carefully curated route. There was an option to heave the bikes over some fences, take our chances crossing a busy railway line but sense prevailed — or to be honest, Dr T prevailed. I’m an idiot, I would have done it and ended my days squished by the high speed express from Arnhem to Duisburg.

Some Google Maps and Garmin fettling indicated that there might be a path which would take us to a railway crossing a bit further along the tracks which might be open. We set off and immediately hit gravelly and sandy path which taxed our somewhat depleted bike handling skills and concentration,

Oh yeah, this was fun.

My Garmin has the country borders on it and, according to Garmin, this is the border between Germany and the Netherlands.

Where the tarmac starts is The Netherlands: country number 6.

The Netherlands is much more densely populated than Germany. We immediately ended up on some dijks which wound their way through the neatest countryside in the world. We were joined by hundreds of beautiful tall blond men and women cycling along between their towns and villages. In Germany we could cycle for an hour on the cycle paths and never see another person. On the Dutch dijks we had to practice our overtaking skills every 30 seconds.

It was Sunday and so a lot of people were out enjoying the weather. We saw a “summer camp” around a tiny lake. Everybody was having a BBQ, lazing in the sun, and playing in the water. It was hot today and, had we had more time and space to pack a swimming costume, we might have joined them.

What fun!

We stopped to rest on the IJsseldijk and look across the virtually endless dijks and polders.

You may be saying to yourself “oh look, he’s got a typo in that previous sentence”. Well, it turns out that “i” and “j” together in Dutch is a digraph. When they come together they’re treated as a single symbol and therefore when the word is capitalised, they both get capitalised. Pronouncing “ij” is a bit difficult. Something like “eye” or the “eh” and “ee” sounds blended together. Still, you now know something you didn’t know before starting this blog right?

As is so often the case, the last 30km went very slowly. I’ve spared you the photographs of the endless vistas of dijk top paths, verdant green fields and big skies.

I’m not sure why the mammoth is here. There is some association but I couldn’t decipher it from the signs.

We might have been tired but one is never too tired to take a picture of a sign to an amusingly named town.

The “loo” for the past 10 days has mostly been behind a tree.

As we got closer to Arnhem, we were directed off the dijks and onto the world-class Dutch urban cycle infrastructure. I was cycling along thinking “boy, we dream of this stuff in the UK” and then realised they probably dream of this sort of stuff in Germany who have good cycling infrastructure themselves. We cycled for 10km right into the centre of Arnhem on dedicated cycle paths which were wide, well surfaced and, at every intersection, bikes had the right of way.

A real joy to behold.

I have resisted making “Bridge Too Far” jokes or references in this post although clearly the temptation is high. There’s quite a lot of history and a lot of memorials around Arnhem devoted to the failed — and some might say foolish — battle of Arnhem. It’s a great story and a good film. The film was created far enough after the war to be able to leaven the bravery and dedication of the fighters with a clear rebuke to the Allied high command for lack of strategic planning and support given to the soldiers and airmen.

This was understated and nice.

I have surpassed myself with the hotel tonight. It’s a hotel built inside a de-consecrated church. It is almost a caricature of Dutch coolness. Obviously because the hotel is very boutiquey as those of you who have stayed at this type of hotel will know that “boutique” is a synonym for “hopeless shower” and “”funky plug sockets which never work”. If you want working plug sockets and a good shower go to a Mercure.

Those boxes in the sky are the rooms.

Unfortunately, the hotel is way way too cool to have a restaurant or a bar on Sunday evening so we headed out into Arnhem to get some food. Arnhem on a Sunday night was…relaxed and inviting. Groups of people wandered around the quaint but clearly rebuilt centre of town window shopping and chatting. Everybody was tall, blond and beautiful. Dr T fitted right in.  I was massively outclassed.

Having spent 10 days in Switzerland, Germany and France, not a single microgramme of spice or chilli has passed our lips. It was time to have some traditional Dutch food: the rijsstafel. In the same way that the UK has Indian food as a by-product of a somewhat questionable colonial history, the Dutch have Indonesian food. The rijstafel is some rice accompanied by 12 or 14 tiny little tasting dishes of various vegetables, meats and fish in varying levels of spiciness.

Carpet bombing the tastebuds

The restaurant was packed, run by an Indonesian family who were wildly friendly and helpful. We stuffed spicy food into our spice-depleted bodies as fast as it arrived. It was perfect.

Today was 120km and that’s probably as far as we can do in a day by now. The weather was sunny all the way, the route was varied and there was lots of see. We both thought it was a great day even with a few dodgy moments on sandy paths and long dijks with the wind in our faces.

Originally tomorrow was going to be a 160km suffer-fest all the way to Hoek van Holland but in the planning stage there was a rumbling of mutiny from Dr T so it’s been split into two days. Tomorrow is a relatively short day of 80km to Utrecht. We might have time to do some sightseeing before heading to the Hook the following day. Our Boutique Church hotel is way way too cool to have a heated towel rail — or even a towel rail — so tomorrow is going to start in a very damp way despite the good weather.

Stats:

• Distance, 120.9km. Long but we managed it. Would have been harder without the excellent cycling infrastructure on both sides of the border.
• Average Speed: 20kmh. That’s just fine.
• Bodies: We are not both very much in the endurance cycling zone. Stuff hurts but we tough it out. Over an entire day, the average heart rate is around 105…

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