Day 12 –  Cologne (DE) to Bad Hönninger (DE)

6th April 2022

Another good night’s sleep, regardless of the traffic on the bridge above. We set the alarm for 7 am in the hope of sorting through our gear and still getting away early, but it was not to be.

With the aid of Google Translate, I chatted to a French chap by the name of Pascal cycling a bike and pulling a trailer with a large battery and solar panel. Although, due to the size of the motor, I assume, given the power in the battery, the trailer was pushing him.

We finally left the campsite over two hours after getting up. I’m not sure what we were doing all that time, but we need to improve our start of the day performance.

We came off the bridge to access the campsite, so the first objective was to get back to the western shore of the Rhine. With our legs still too warm, we pushed the hulk until we were alongside the relentless bridge traffic.

At the other end of the bridge, we quickly lost the height gained through the push 10 mins earlier and entered the hassle and bustle of a busy town, preparing for the day ahead.

When planning for this leg of the tour, we pictured cycling through a picturesque scene, with the Rhine to our left and the German countryside rolling along to our right. It was; therefore, a little disappointing being surrounded by smoke billowing chimney stacks and petrochemical plants for the first hour or so.

We eventually made it back to the cycle path adjacent to the Rhine, but it was short-lived. With an increasingly frustrating headwind, much of the day was spent navigating around closed sections on the cycle route, often getting lost on the way due to roadworks in the towns we were forced into.

One such diversion was caused by a bridge not being where it should be diverted us through building sites and farm tracks, adding almost an hour to an already long day.

By the time we were back on the Rhine, exhausted and in need of calories, we decided to cut our losses and stop at the next campsite we could find. We had planned a 90km day, but we were done for the day with only 65km in the bag. We had hit a wall that we weren’t going to be able to climb over today.

We spotted a large campground on the far riverbank with hundreds of caravans and campervans, but with no bridge to it in sight. Just as we had resigned ourselves to a more extended day, a car ferry pulled out into view from behind a spit in the river. The decision was made. We had found our home for the night.

The ferry crossing took a little more than five minutes, and the cycle to the campsite reception was about the same. €18 paid for a flat area of grass to share with a couple of geese. Geese clearly couldn’t decide where to go to the toilet, so they experimented everywhere.

We put the tent up, still being buffeted by the wind, and prepared the bedding for the night. We headed into the town in search of food, although not in much hope of an excellent choice from what we found with a quick search on Google Maps.

By the time we made it into the town centre, it was shortly after 6 pm. The town centre was deserted. A couple of pubs had their lights on, but every other business was closed permanently for the night.

We pushed to the other side of town, separated by a railway line. Re-entering the light from the railway underpass, we immediately came to an Asian restaurant, which, after a quick scan of the area, appeared to be our best bet, if not our only bet.

With ten minutes to kill before our food was ready, we managed to find the location of the local Aldi supermarket. After collecting our take-away, we picked a few Deborah essentials at Aldi, including strawberries and chocolate and headed back to the campsite.

We ate our feast at a picnic table adjacent to the site reception area. While the food was edible and contained a few of the calories we so needed, I had received the wrong order, but after the day we had just been through, I shouldn’t have expected anything else.

The tent ground is adjacent to a health spare with an outside pool. Even though it was starting to feel bitterly cold in the gusting wind, the spa was still busy, with a large group of middle-aged men and women having a great time.

Therefore, with the picture of a bunch of naked Germans, we crawled into our sleeping bags and had an early night.