From Neal - Catch up

It has been a while since I posted due to the little adventure I had yesterday on the trains. A whole different story which I will put on the blog at a later date.

This tour has been as much a battle against the elements as it has been physically. My saddle doesn't hurt like last time, I can walk properly, but the top of my shoulders have been the problem.

This morning was much like our night in Brussels, only much worse!! About a mile out of Valkenburg the thunder and lightening started, then the heavens opened up. The wind got so strong that trees came down, police and firemen were all over the place trying to clear them from the road. Hail the size of large peas came down. Yesterday got to 41 degrees, today we were hit with frozen rain, which by the way really hurts. On the plus side this reduced the temperature to a comfortable 16 degrees for a few hours.

German tarmac is the best in the world hands down. It was so smooth and meant that we could drive hard like the HTC Columbia train. We ate up the miles quite nicely. We did however find ourselves being beeped again by the German drivers who were pointing out that we did a number of miles in a 100kmh lane. We weren't going THAT fast!!!

Everything slowed right down when we hit the outskirts of Koln and ended up following a cycle path which took us on a large detour.

Adam seemed to be a little concerned about using his german language skills at the start of the tour. However, he has done a really good job on communicating with the locals and seemed to get into the more he has done it.

Tonight has been an evening of meat. Lashings of it. I had a drei konige which consisted of a lamb shank, pork ribs, pork knuckle all covered in a gravy with pan fried potatoes and sauerkraut!! A bit full now as you can imagine. Walking back to the hotel to sleep it off.