Today we had a 30 km ride to Brussels, a Eurostar journey to London and a 15 km ride to my parent’s flat in west London.  We waved goodbye to Alex as he headed off to work on his motorbike.  It was great to see him and a nice end to our trip.

We found a bakery and breakfasted before the ride to Brussels.  The 30 km seemed to be really long, mostly I think because we were on quite busy roads and it wasn’t that enjoyable.  But we were lucky to escape the forecast rain and the sun even came out when we arrived at Brussels Midi and found a cafe to wile away an hour in.

Taking the Eurostar with the bikes is actually quite good (although you have to pay £30 for each bike!).  We dropped them off no problem but then had to tackle security and boarding with all of our panniers on a trolley!  Not ideal but at least the luggage racks are plentiful.

The journey was only two hours and I had a sleep whilst Dave read his book and then we were in London!  That’s where it got annoying.  Dave piled all the bags onto the platform whilst I went in search of a trolley.  There were two on the platform that had both been commandeered by Eurostar staff to help old people with their bags.  There were no other trolleys to be found, and a few other people looking for them, so I followed one of the staff helpers and his trolley until he got to the lift and decided that the one wheely bag on it could just be wheeled and I could have the trolley!

We loaded up and walked out through customs, through the whole of St Pancras station to find Despatch at the end of the Earth where our bikes were waiting for us, by this time 40 minutes after the train arrived!

Now for the fun bit – a 15 km ride through central London with touring bikes at rush hour.  Gulp.  It was actually pretty fun though.  Dave navigated smoothly and we zoomed out of town past Hammersmith and into Chiswick, feeling at home again amongst the kind of traffic we’re used to.

I thought it was going to be strange or uncomfortable to be back, but I actually feel pretty good about it and I think Dave does too.  It’s nice to see everyone again after 5 months and I actually feel pretty at home being back in this city.  We’ve got quite a long time here before the next tour, so hopefully the feeling lasts!

After our return, I was hoping for a rest, but I’ve got a job interview tomorrow and Dave’s going to start helping out with the flat and there are people to visit and things to organise and no time to catch up on sleeping in a bed!  But it’s good to keep busy and I’m looking forward to the next few weeks.  (But also boo! The tour is over! I can’t believe it!)

Until next time 🙂

-Anna

This weekend we planned to do a walk with Julian to a place called the Teufel Tisch (devil’s table), a strange rock formation in the forest. Julian had a late night last night and so we had the morning to ourselves and caught up with some reading and writing whilst he caught up on sleep. When Julian got up, we had lunch together before heading to the forest. It was about an hour’s drive to get to the car park and 5pm by the time we started the walk! But the weather was so hot, we were glad to be past the heat of the afternoon.

We set off gently uphill through the forest, chatting about the lynx’s return and what it would mean for people and wildlife. Then the path wound up some steep switchbacks and we sweated our way to the top. From there, it was gently undulating all the way to the devil’s table. It was quite a sight to behold! The stone here is sandstone and the erosion at this location happens to have left a rather large piece of rock standing on quite a skinny plinth. There’s even a tree growing on top, which is lovely.

Nice bit of climbing

Cool formations

It really is a spectacular rock

After a water break and a few piccies, we headed back down to the car park, talking about the local landscape, people and history.  The evening light was beautiful, the orange sunlight glowing through the leaves on the beech trees and bringing out the red bark of the Scot’s pine.

Beautiful evening

Scot’s pine in the evening sun

Then we zoomed back to Trippstadt in time for last orders at Julian’s local Italian. It felt good to have a hearty meal after a hot hike!

On Sunday, I went for another walk with Lea and Caro and their dogs whilst Dave submitted a job application for some winter work, which is exciting.

Tomorrow is our last day at the lynx project, then we’re on our way home!! Can hardly believe it.

-Anna

Today we had chatty breakfast with the guys in the house before back at the castle offices to help out with some jobs. Everyone was busy in the morning, so we took the time to try and plan and book our journey home. I don’t know why it’s so bloody difficult to travel on the train with your bike, but it is. Some trains don’t take bikes, so you end up having to go hundreds of miles out of your way, spend more than twice as long on your journey, make four times as many connections, and then pay double the price for the privilege!

After phoning Eurostar and Deutsche Bahn several times, we weren’t really getting anywhere, so we left it all to mull whilst getting stuck into some jobs. We were helping them make some wooden cut-out animals, based on ones owned by the hunting committee. We placed the existing animals on top of ply-board panels like a jigsaw puzzle to find the best fit, then traced around the edges so that they could be cut with an electric saw. I did the drawing and Dave did the cutting, managing to finish a wild boar piglet before we were going for lunch with Julian.

After lunch, I left Dave to his sawing whilst I tried to sort out the travel arrangements. 4.5 hours later, he had cut out a hare and a fox and I had found a route and booked the necessary trains. Phew! Feeling exhausted, we picked up some oven pizzas and headed back to Julian’s place for a beer. Then he was going out but we declined the party in favour of watching Soylent Green (so weird) and getting an early night.

I feel a lot better that our transport is all sorted and I’m sort of looking forward to being back in London…

– Anna

Our efforts of the last few days put us within easy distance of Trippstadt today – we only had 20 km to go. We headed out of Hochspeyer and were immediately confronted with a 4 km hill. Knowing that the hill comprised 20% of our total journey for the day took the edge off it however, and we cheerfully ground up to the top of a lovely forested ridge.

Woodland riding

The ridge went around a big basin with Trippstadt at the other end of it, and we enjoyed rolling through the trees with a forest vista occasionally opening up to our left. We were struck with the size of the forest, in our experience you just don’t see miles of unbroken woodland in the UK. We were a bit sad to see a tiny bat dead at the side of the road, we took some photos in case it had white-nose fungus (link), but I don’t think it did. I guess it got hit by a car. We also saw the remains of a bad car accident with skidmarks off the road up a steep bank, and then a bit of road with murky brown stains; the entirety colourfully marked out with police spray paint. It makes you feel extra vulnerable on the bike when you see that stuff and think what would happen if you were in the way of it when it happened!

We climbed one final hill to the outskirts of Trippstadt, and since we were early for our meeting with the Project Team, we settled down at a bench and table under a spreading oak tree for some lunch and a read. I was reading Kith, a book about childhood by Jay Griffiths, working my way through some particularly horrendous accounts of bad parenting, when a landrover pulled up, and a khaki-covered guy jumped out. ”Anna and Dave?” This is becoming a common occurrence for us! The guy turned out to be Michael, one of the Project employees. He was on his way home to get some sleep before going on a night-time red deer count in the forest. We had a nice chat and he welcomed us to town before heading off. We decided we should just go along and see who was in at the Project.

Last uphill

We rolled up to the address we’d been given, which turned out to be a rather grand castle, reminiscent of the Swiss National Park offices. Not sure what it is with all these stately homes containing rewilding projects! Sylvia welcomed us in, and we spoke briefly about the project before a local journalist arrived to ask us some questions about our trip. I think we were a little more coherent this time; we’ll soon be media-savvy rewilding spokespersons if this continues! All good for the UK rewilding revolution!

Posing with a lynx!

Julian, our contact at the project, arrived a little later, he’s just come back from a holiday and came straight to the office to welcome us. Dedication! We are also staying at his place while we’re in Trippstadt, thanks Julian! We jumped on the bikes and followed him back to his apartment. There we met housemate Marten and Marten’s friend Konrad. We had a lovely evening eating dinner round the kitchen table. I’m afraid I might have bored Marten and Konrad with my garbled ranting about British politics; Anna just isn’t interested in that stuff, so those poor guys got everything I’ve been saving up since the General Election in May!

We eventually settled down on the sofabed at about midnight and got some sleep ready to help out at the project tomorrow.

– Dave

Today we had a 45 km ride to do, so we weren’t in a hurry to leave. It was a beautiful morning at the winery and we had a relaxed breakfast and caught up on some internet-related chores. After drinking a bottle of their delicious wine last night, we ordered a whole case of it to be sent home this morning! Then it was 11am and time to get going.

It was getting hot and we set off along a paved farm track, both feeling slightly cranky for some reason. (Perhaps the late night, bottle of wine then sleeping in a tent?) We’re planning on finishing the cycle tour early and heading back to the UK sooner than originally intended in order to help out family and friends on a project that Dave co-owns. This means trying to find affordable transport back and deciding whether we’re going to travel together and whether Dave is going to miss the last rewilding project. The debates got heated as we sweated up a few hills in the midday sun but cleared up after our lunch stop.

Enjoying a nice paved farm track

Then Google had some more delights in store for us on our route. Most of the farm tracks had been paved so far, but a few of them were becoming gravelly and then the ‘route’ went along a field boundary that was barely a footpath, let alone a cycle route. We followed a detour along a minor road to rejoin the route, carried on along it for a while before it disappeared into nothing once again. Then we abandoned Google in favour of Maps.me and planned our own route along minor roads through fields and villages, which was very pleasant in the end, a lot faster and a lot more direct!

At this point we’re supposed to turn off…. into the field?

Suspect but still doable (slowly)

Let’s find a detour

That’s better!

When we made it to the edge of Hochspeyer village, it was somehow almost 5pm. We went to find an affordable hotel in the absence of any campsites in the area. We rode down a steep hill into town and found one of the two hotels, looking very much closed. So we rode back up a steep hill to the other side of town and found the other hotel. This one at least had a doorbell, but there was no answer. We met one of the guests outside, who said it was open, so we just had to wait. We sat around in the garden in the sun for half an hour then checked into our room.

Not feeling excited about having to go shopping and cook, we went for dinner and then watched a movie, which was all very nice and relaxed. Tomorrow, we visit the Lynx project!

– Anna

The wind was insane last night, we both woke up a few times and were glad we had big trees protecting our tent from the worst of it. On the plus side, against all expectation, our washing was dry this morning, hooray!

Apart from the good air-drying facilities, this campsite pretty much sucked, and we were happy to leave. Never good when you arrive in the pissing rain and the manager shouts at you that you can’t put your tent together under a shelter. Oh well. We said goodbye to our fellow cycle tourist and headed off. It was really complicated following the Google route through Frankfurt, if we didn’t have GPS it just wouldn’t be possible I don’t think. We’d have to take the road or something crazy like that.

As we were going along a river path beside some allotments, Anna spotted a red squirrel with its head stuck in a fence. She was so quick to jump of her bike and release it that I didn’t even see the thing until it scaled the fence and launched itself into an allotment. Anna Heslop, Nature Protector!

We stopped for first lunch in a park and discussed all the stuff we need to do when we get home. There’s a lot of stuff! Dunno how we’re going to find the time, or the money! Ah well, we’ll worry about that in a few weeks!

We eventually escaped Frankfurt and headed towards Alzey. We were still following Google Maps, which was taking us on some weird and wonderful routes to keep us off the roads, but thankfully none as ridiculously agricultural as yesterday. We went through some lovely woodland and along some horrible windy riverside. We also crossed the good old Rhine again, pity about the lorries whizzing past right next to us!

Nice ride in the woods

Get me of this bridge now please!

Just as we were wondering if we’d taken one diversion too many to make it to Weinheim tonight, Anna found a cycle track along an old railway line that suddenly sped us several kilometres in the right direction, and the game was on once again.

Railways – great for cycling!

We tried to follow the line till our destination, but sadly they must have given up restoring it at some point because we had to revert to horrible busy roads and very roundabout cycle paths, but at least the end was in sight!

When we got into Weinheim we were full of trepidation. If the campsite was closed there was nothing for miles. We’d already decided we would just go knocking at farms until someone let us lay down our stinky carcasses in a field. Luckily this proved unnecessary; the campsite here is tiny, but amazing. It’s part of a Winery, the facilities are brilliant, and the lady here welcomed in with a tasting of four delicious white wines, which worked pretty quickly on our dehydrated brains! We liked them so much we bought a couple of bottles. We were worrying if we’d have enough money to pay for them, and them they turned out to be €3.50 each. Best campsite ever. So we just had dinner with a delicious chilled bottle of Gewurtzstraminer and we have another in the pannier for tomorrow. Bring it on!

Guess we’re back in wine country!

Oh yes

The view was nice too

– Dave

Today we had to ride 10km into Gießen then stop there to go the shops for food and try to find an eye doctor. Since we went swimming in the sea in Holland (3 weeks ago?), my eyes were itchy for a while, then the right one was sore and never felt better. I was worried there might be something stuck in it and wanted to get it looked at.

After shopping and using McDonald’s internet to load up the day’s directions, I found an eye clinic on the map just 1km away. But when I went in and asked if I could see a doctor, the guy told me that was a university building! He sent me in the direction of likely clinics and off we went. The first clinic I tried said that since my eyes weren’t swollen or gooey, it wasn’t an emergency. “I can book you an appointment. The next available one is in the new year.” What?! By then I’ll either be blind or better and I’ll definitely be in the UK. I asked in the optician but he said they can’t look into your eyes, perhaps I should try another clinic and make it sound more urgent and push for an emergency appointment? Hmm, good advice!

So I went to a second clinic and said I was worried there was something in my eye, can I please see the eye doctor! She said yes of course, can I see your ID? Being a foreigner, I would have to pay privately. It turned out to be only 25 euros though so I was up for it! How long will I have to wait? Oh, about… 5 minutes. Awesome!

That means that after finding out how the system works, I managed to see an eye doctor within 10 minutes of asking to see one, for only 24 euros. Bloody amazing. She looked in my eyes, told me I had an infection and gave me a prescription for some antibiotic eye drops and I was on my way.

A trip to the neighbouring pharmacy then we were on the road again, happy that I was going to continue to have depth perception. By this time it was almost midday and we were going to have to stop for food before we’d really gone anywhere, but at least we rode out of town a bit.

After a pit-stop, we’d probably done about 20km in total and it was the afternoon. We’d better get cracking! But there were a few things slowing us down. One was the wind! It had been in our faces since we left Rothaargebirge and it was still blowing fiercly. The other thing was that we were following a Google maps route, and it was all over the place! It started off not too bad, just a few nice tracks through field and forest. Definitely a longer route than taking the road, but quieter too. Then things started to get dodgy. One track turned into a narrow trail with the odd large stone to swerve around – not easy with a heavy load. Then we were on sandy forestry tracks in the creepy middle-of-nowhere. Then it told us to turn off into the trees. No path at all! Just trees. And it was starting to rain. So we switched to Maps.me for a bit to find a way back to proper little roads.

I directed us over the motorway, around a golf course and through a village to meet the B455. In the rain. We joined it but then pulled over after 200 meters. It was so busy! There was no shoulder and nobody slowed down to pass us, not even the trucks. Dave was eyeing up a farm track opposite and I tried to map an alternative route. There wasn’t anything good though, so farm track it was. The gravel track turned into a grass track and we were riding between fields in the wind and rain, hoping we’d meet up with a path soon! Luckily we came out onto a track and some dog walkers looked at us like “where did you two come from?”. Good question.

Thanks Google!

On the paved tracks we made it to the outskirts of a village for second lunch on a bench under a lovely tree with dense rain-stopping foliage. We were aiming for City-Camp Frankfurt, just north of the city, and it was still a little way away. But we got back on the bikes to re-find our lost Google route and make it there. Thankfully the route redeemed itself in the latter stages and we found ourselves on a gorgeous riverside cycle route as the rain started getting heavier. With no more route finding to do before the campsite, we enjoyed the ride. We even found an abandoned airstrip to play in on the way!

Joining the riverside route

Ready for takeoff…!

And at 6pm we finally arrived dripping at the campsite, got set up in the rain and went for warm showers. It was a pretty crappy campsite but we’ve learned not to expect much from city campsites. We did meet another tourer there, who was training for a spring charity ride to the northern most point in Norway!

The rain stopped in time for us to hang out the laundry, and we snuggled up in bed as the overcast sky went from grey to black, hoping tomorrow would be nicer.

-Anna