Dougie does Dortmund...

So. Today didn't go 100 pct according to plan. I'm eating gummi bears while watching Netanyahu on Meet the Press. What a serious tool! Anyway, I got a very late start today. Stayed the night with Shubph and Hannes in Bonn, which was lovely. I had a very nice breakfast and then went to the gym, so I didn't actually get started until lunchtime. I was supposed to go 78 miles to Dortmund. But neglected the fact that I had to go through suburban Cologne, which was pretty much endless traffic lights. And, it being Germany, I had to actually wait for all of them. Sigh. I finally gave up on trying to get that far, and basically just headed north up the Rhine valley. I ended up in Dusseldorf at sundown. Took a regional train to Dortmund. Omg, the bike car at the end of the train. It is also the pram car, so it was jammed full of cyclists and jammed full of screaming babies. What a fun 53 minutes that was! Anyway, I will set off tomorrow morning from Croydon, which is a place that does seem like it met the full dose of the allied redecorating committee! Oh, I forgot, yesterday, which already seems like a million years ago, it was 70 miles from Aachen to Bonn. The first section was through forested hills that reminded me quite a lot of western Pennsylvania. It opened up then as I headed east towards the Rhine, with great sweeping vistas of fields of corn, lettuce, cabbage and onions, then an endless number of apple orchards. Wind turbines everywhere as well. Honestly, why do the British get fussed about wind turbines? They don't seem to worry about pylons, and those are way the help uglier and more ubiquitous than turbines! Lots of little farm towns. They aren't as hyper neat as they were in the Netherlands, but they also don't have endless has stations and car dealerships strung out for miles like Belgium. I had an amazing mandarin cake at a little cafe in some random microdink town. I am so enjoying just popping along through all these places! I actually thought I would end up feeling extremely lonely, and while I'm very glad to be seeing people along the way, I am actually really enjoying just sort of floating along, me and the road. I suppose it's kinda like when I used to drive back and forth across the US. I loved that, and that was generally just me... Of course when when things go wrong, which they can... Anyway, hopefully they won't! Right, time to take my clothes out of the sink and go to bed!