The Deutschland Tour cycle race finished its first stage in Bonn today. We had reconsidered our plans yesterday and decided only to cycle as far as Cologne. We spent the morning at Haus der Geschichte, a museum of German life since 1945. This was fascinating and it would have been easy to spend the whole day. It was also tempting to stay and see the finish of the cycling, but that was not going to be till late afternoon – and we still have some way to go.
We dutifully set off after lunch and cycled the relatively short distance to Cologne. We had to weave past the barriers for the last part of the race to get down to the river, and we saw all the team buses lined up. Some big name teams were there: BMC, AG2R, Dimension Data and several I have forgotten, plus some buses for teams that were not familiar. I was unimpressed by the team that was unloading chairs from its team bus and dumping them onto the cycle path!
There was a choice about whether to cross the Rhine, cycle on the eastern side and then cross back, but this seemed pointless so we stayed on the west side. As it turned out, we had really bad paths for quite a bit of the journey – broken, uneven surfaces – so it might have been worth two river crossings to avoid them.
The landscape is much more commercial and industrial north of Bonn. Even more cargo vessels on the water today, including a container boat with an extra platform of containers alongside. Didn’t manage to get many photos, especially as the last kilometres into Cologne were through busy city traffic and needed concentration. Bruce survived today with his limited gear options so fingers crossed everything else holds together for the rest of the trip.
Happy to be in Cologne and sneaking in another (and likely final) laundrette trip this evening. Would visit Bonn again very happily so must plan this in some day. For now, we will be off to Düsseldorf tomorrow.
eleanor.scot 