Dragons and Dinosaurs: On my Own in Bavaria

I must have spent too long in the sun, which is still quite strong at southern latitudes. Certainly too strong and too south for a northerner like me. I tried to ride, but I had absolutely no energy, fell asleep on the grass, then threw up when the strengthening sun started to take effect. I took the hint. I'd passed a campsite a mile or two back - a beautiful spot beside some rapids on the Altmuhl, where I dossed the day away, chatting to the locals including a guy in a Stetson who'd first camped and canoed there 25 years ago, and a dotty Bavarian psychologist who introduced himself with a riff on his harmonica. I also met Hans the Bavarian Boatman, who possessed the most wonderful rolling Bavarian accent. He was from Munich and escaping the Oktoberfest madness by boating down the Altmuhl.

I had an early start the next day, passing Hans downstream, and I was in Eichstätt before the rush hour started. The Altmuhl valley has a rich geological history. Millions of years ago, it bore the main flow of the Danube, but the geology shifted and now the size of the river hardly seems to do justice to the huge valley through which it flows, and which dwarfs it. The Altmuhl is also where Archaeopteryx and other famous fossils were discovered, but I decided not to visit the museum: onward!





The Altmuhl loops north after Eichstätt. I decided to cut the corner, knowing that this was likely to mean tackling a few hills. I do enjoy the challenge of hills, but the steep valley walls looked rather forbidding. The route, however, was quite well graded, except for a steep path through the forest. However, the forest was sublimely quiet. I stopped in the chamber of trees and once again I imagined myself as Bilbo Baggins, traipsing through Mirkwood on his way to meet the dragon.



I was enjoying being on my own again. I set my sights on Landshut, the Danube, and the road to Austria.

Chasing the Kingfisher: down the Tauber and Altmuhl with Felix,September 2011

"Federalüntergerauntenflederhafenschaften" is how the sign read, I think. Forgive my poor memory, and worse German. Felix laughed when he saw it, as it meant "Federally Approved Place of Relaxation". This being Germany, it obviously meant that we wouldn't be able to relax anywhere else, so we were obliged to ride through southern Germany in a state of heightened tension. Damn those Germans and their rules!

I'd met Felix earlier that day, when I was riding out of Frankfurt while suffering from the kind of hangover you get when you spend the night drinking with a gang of young Americans on their way to Oktoberfest in Munich. It was too bright and I was going very slowly. He overtook me when I stopped to remove something from my wheel, then I leapfrogged him when he stopped to check his map. He addressed me in German, then again in English when he registered my incomprehension, and when he told me about his plan to ride along the Tauber river, it sounded far more interesting than my planned route. The Tauber Valley is known as "Lieberlisch Taubertal" on the publicity brochures and maps, it is home to many wild birds and animals and possesses natural beauty which was only enhanced by the first blush of autumn in the trees and the sunshine of the Indian Summer which I was enjoying through Europe, though the Germans have a different phrase for it: Altweibersommer, oldladysummer. The towns along the Tauber all show signs of its rich history. They each had a medieval Altstadt, most notably Rothenburg, where Japanese tourists pointed their cameras at Felix and I cycling up the cobbles rather than the glockenspiel display in the town square. There were other signs of the Tauber's history, such as the beautiful stone bridges which had been built with church money and were adorned with statues of the local saints or bishops holding crosses in attitudes supposedly of religious contemplation, but they mostly reminded me of axe-wielding rock stars.



For at least the second time since I'd left the UK I had chucked away my plans and went a completely different route. One of the delights of cycle touring is the flexibility and freedom which you don't have when you travel by plane or train and have to keep to timetables not of your own making.

Chance companions are another: Felix bristled with information about the natural history of the region, its geology and wildlife and plantlife. He told me that of all the wild creatures that dwelt along the Tauber, the one he most wanted to see was the kingfisher. It's a small, elusive bird with brilliant blue plumage, and it lives by rivers such as the Tauber, perching on a branch at the river's edge, watching the water flow beneath and waiting for the moment to dive into the stream and re-emerge with a silvery fish clutched in its beak.

As we rode along, then, Felix and I would pause at the bridges and other places where the kingfisher was likely to be found, hoping to see it.

We did see kites, kestrels, magpies and pied wagtails, oystercatchers, hares and foxes, yellowhammers twittering in the trees, huge pike lazily turning under the bridges we crossed, and buzzards whose cries came down through the trees at our camping site in the abandoned orchard. At least, it should have been abandoned - Felix assured me that the apple trees above us were too old to be commercial crops... Which was true, as the farmer told us herself when she came past on her horse to check the new orchards in the top field. She was so flabbergasted to see campers that she could only say to her horse, "look at that, look at that". Felix proved to be a bit of a jinx when it came to choosing campsites; the next night, we camped by a quiet pond, on a dirt track which was quieter than quiet, apart from the yahoos who used it is a shortcut between their village and the local drinking hole. The next night, in deepest Mittelfranken, we went along an empty track and through a stand of trees to camp at the forest fringe, but even there, just as we were cooking our supper, we could hear the putter-putter of an approaching engine.

We tensed as the tractor approached, but the driver refused even to look at us as he passed, so we relaxed (despite not being in a federally approved place of relaxation), and just as we were opening our Bavarian beers, we heard the putter-putter returning, with reinforcements. I felt as though we'd wandered onto the main road when I saw the tractor and two other cars turn the corner, and both Felix and I thought we were due to be chased off the land, if not threatened with guns.

However, they were delighted to see us there. I'm told that wild camping was legal in Germany until the 1960s, and people seemed to remember that and enjoy seeing us carrying on the tradition, or perhaps they were entertained by the sight of a pair of mad cyclists camping in a field. The farmer pulled his Mercedes over and showed us off to his young son in the passenger seat, and insisted on giving us a pumpkin. When they'd gone, and the tractor had putter-puttered back the way it came, Felix and I turned to each other and burst out laughing.


The pumpkin made a good supper. Food is food, and when it's free it's twice as good. Autumn is a fabulous time to be on the road, when the trees and hedgerows are filled with fruits and berries ripe to be picked. I've probably never eaten as healthily as I did during that month in Europe.



We even found a plum tree by the Tauber; I used my flag to knock them from the branches down to Felix beneath, who caught as many as he could. We stopped on the next bridge to eat them and to watch a huge heron which was waiting on a rock in the stream as if it was about to launch itself into the air. I leaned against the handrail, popped a plum into my mouth, then tried to shout "kingfisher!" around it. Felix turned in time to see the kingfisher fly underneath the bridge in a flash of blue and then away downstream. That glimpse was the most we saw of a kingfisher, but that glimpse was enough. We didn't follow it downstream but continued upstream, to the south and the Altmuhl, chasing the summer.

The Belgium-Germany border: 16/09/2011 to 18/09/2011

Dark brooding forests and grey days and rain. I checked into a campsite and only realised my mistake when the two minibuses of insufferably jolly young Dutch persons parked to either side of me. Even with earplugs and a buff round my head they were making enough noise to wake me at one in the morning.

I'd stopped on the long climb away from Verviers, telling myself any number of reasons - the road would be quieter on a Saturday, the weather would be better - but really I stopped because I couldn't be bothered. My mood had nosedived, I felt lonely and isolated and I was asking myself what I was doing there. Nothing unusual in that, except the usual answers didn't hold their usual power to keep me going.

I plodded along in isolation on the Saturday and the Sunday, and spent a terrible couple of nights where I kept waking up unable to breathe. I opened the tent and gulped in the cool night air, read for a bit until I felt tired again, fell asleep and started the whole cycle again. It also rained on the Sunday night and morning. Striking camp in the rain is a depressing activity - everything's wet and it's going to stay wet.

I grabbed a couple of apples from beside the Mosel near Zell and munched them at the roadside. I was in no mood to go on. I was on the verge of tears all day, not because it was wet or because I was on my own, simply because I was homesick. When I had slept I'd dreamt of home, and friends and family.

The climb out of the Mosel Valley is 7 km long. I know this as the information was shared by a cheerful local cyclist. Too cheerful for me - I was polite but I was in no mood to chat, and he soon dropped back to chivvy his friend along. The poor sod was going even slower than me.

The tears were coming all the time, and eventually I pulled into a layby and sobbed to myself for ten minutes. It didn't lift my brown mood, but at least I felt I could carry on. One of the thoughts that kept me going was that I hadn't tolerated a job I disliked just to turn tail after a week, and as my sister said in a text message, they'd all still be there when I got back.

A truly bewildering encounter with a mad old German next - I knocked on his door and asked for water, he ignored me and threw some nutshells into the road. I wasn't to be dismissed so easily, and said more insistently: "Wasser, bitte." He still refused to look at me. I followed him towards his house, though, and he knew I was there as he scraped his feet on his drive to indicate that I should wipe my feet. Despite showing my proficiency at this task, he obviously thought I was some sort of simpleton, as he wouldn't let me turn on the tap myself. I don't know what was going on - maybe he thought my grandad killed his brother in the war. Maybe he wasn't used to passers-by. More likely, he was just a miserable old sod.

Pondering this kept my mood up, as did the improving weather, though the proximity of ear-splitting engine whine from dozens of fucking too-powerful cars and motorbikes on their way to the nearby Nurburgring certainly didn't. Tossers.

Sunday in Germany is a miserable place. Nothing's open - it took me ages to find a garage where I could buy some milk and beer, and I got lost trying to avoid one of the Autobahns. I left Simmern, rode another 10 miles, then had to come back to Simmern and found myself back at the same, closed, supermarket.

I did at least have a good tailwind, so I struck east when I eventually found a cyclable route out of Simmern. I wanted to get to the Rhein that night. Unfortunately there appeared to be a huge hill in the way, near Bacharach. I said a little prayer that it wouldn't be too hard, as I hadn't the energy. I kept following the cycle route signs for Oberheimbach and Niederheimbach, but without much hope. "Ober" always means a bastard of a hill.

I had to stop a couple more times for a cry - the landscape was beautiful, gentle rolling hills and a deserted road winding through pine forests, but I could only think of home.



Something strange happened near Oberheimbach - I still can't work out the topography, but the hill which I didn't want to climb never appeared. The road tracked the Heimbach (Heim Beck) down, down and down some more to the milky waters of the Rhein. The sunset was putting on quite a display behind me, but I was far too relieved to stop - it's a strange feeling, when an obstacle you expect to encounter fails to materialise. I hardly pedalled through Oberheimbach and Niederheimbach, freewheeling all the way down to the Rhein. I found a campsite, which was rubbish, but there were some very friendly people there, and I had another night's disturbed sleep, but that was owing to the busyness of the Rhein Valley - two railway lines, two busy roads and endless traffic up and down the waterway. I still felt homesick and isolated, but I'd been to the Rhein Valley before, so I was in familiar terrain, and I'd come through a tough mental patch, and that gave me the fortitude to carry on riding.


Der Rhein!

What's a Prince Albert in Dutch? Antwerp to Maastricht along the Albertkanaal, 15/09/2011

The day I eventually left Antwerp, Sven skived off his college course and rode with me along the Albertkanaal. This was the flattest 90 miles I have ever ridden.

Not to say it was dull; in Antwerp, Sven had insisted that I buy a Union Flag to put on my bike, which drew more than its fair share of attention. As we were brewing up by the canal a load of factory workers on their fag break came over to chat, and a lady out to get her shopping said "I'm very proud of you" when Sven explained (in Dutch) that I'd ridden from the UK.

Sven had ridden this route loads of times, but that didn't stop us getting lost. We were high above a lake and riding through a pine forest when Sven commented "This is really pretty - I haven't seen this before."

Actually, Sven was a very good guide, and pointed out things I would have missed on my own, such as the work of a Belgian artist/lunatic who wanders the country picking up discarded plastic and nailing it to the closest bit of wood, or the crossover from urban Antwerp, where the local posers ignored us, to friendly Limburg, where everyone wore a smile and every cyclist waved at us. A few of them commented on the discrepancy in weight distribution between our bikes, as I was lugging four panniers plus drybags, and Sven had a spare tube and a pump. "We play Paper-Scissors-Stone", Sven told them.



After the detour through the pines where we realised we'd been going north instead of south, I started to look for somewhere to camp, and though there was a campsite marked both on my map and on the one belonging to a Belgian couple who were cycling to Germany, we couldn't find it. I'd had enough after 90 miles and the ground next to the path was flat. That did for me. There were a few odd looks from passers-by and the Belgian couple laughed, saying we'd given up too soon.

A few beers and a bit of tea, then Sven went to ride back to Antwerp, and I felt weird, as it was the first time I'd be on my own and with no familiar people on the horizon. It felt as though, after an extended and boozy few days with friends through Yorkshire and Belgium, the trip was really starting here.


Sven: "I think it's this way"

Zeebrugge to Antwerp, 13th to 15th September 2011

Zeebrugge: my last view of the sea for 2000 miles

My first stop was Antwerp, as my mate Sven had said he would let me doss there. It was about 120 km from the ferry port at Zeebrugge, and with disembarkation at 09.30, that gave me plenty of time, especially as Sven wouldn't be home until 10 pm.

But the huge storm which had made leaving port at Hull a slower affair than normal had slowed the crossing, as had an engines failure during the night. It was 11.30 before we limped into port on the continent. Still, the huge westerly wind was at my back and I flew along. I had a brief stopover in the chocolate-box (and chocolate-smelling) perfection of Brugges, but only very brief, as I had miles still to go, and an appointment to keep.

I would have made better time if my map had made clearer the difference between roads I could cycle along and motorways. I didn't cycle along any motorways (that day), but I did add many unnecessary miles to my journey.

By pure fluke I discovered that there was a cyclepath alongside the motorway into Antwerp, which I rode along until about 7pm, when I started to think that I wouldn't get to Antwerp that evening. I stopped in Sint-Gillis-Wass to text Sven and let him know I wouldn't be there that night and to buy a few beers at a supermarket. The girl at the checkout pegged me for a cyclist straightaway, but our conversation was short-lived (I'd got as far as telling her I'd be camping in a field that night) and interrupted by a phone call from Sven, who assured me that it was only 15 km from Sint-Gillis-Wass to Antwerp and it'd be daft for me to stop. Feeling tired but reassured, I pedalled on.

30 kilometres later, I was still riding through fields and Antwerp seemed very far away. I nabbed a couple of pears which were hanging over a fence, and switched on my lights. I hadn't planned to ride at night at all, but there have been times when I was glad to have my lights, and this was the first.

Twilight in Antwerp. I was at the wrong side of the river and couldn't see any signs of where to cross, except the motorway tunnel, which I knew I wouldn't be able to use. I collared a gaggle of handy locals and explained that I needed to get to the main railway station, and...

"You want to know how to cross the river?" they finished for me.

"Yes!"

They looked to their right, at the official-looking building in front of which I'd stopped.

"You could use the tunnel...?" they suggested.

The building, it turns out, was the lift for the cycle tunnel under the Schelde, which is far too broad and busy a river to have many bridges. Had I missed the signs for the tunnel? No, there weren't any signs. Locals just know, everyone else has to aim and hope.

The tunnel itself was magnificent. The lift was huge and instead of having floors, it displayed the depth below sea level in metres, which added a sci fi element to the descent, as did the polished brass fittings, dating from an era when engineers set out to make things which were decorative as well as functional. In my head I could hear James Mason as Captain Nemo counting off the metres to the lower level.



There were only two other cyclists and a jogger in the lift, and as the other two ignored the No Cycling signs, so did I. I expect everybody does. I wanted to shout something and hear my voice echo back at me in the tunnel, but a mother was walking the other way with a pushchair and a toddler. As she was already looking at me a bit askance, yelling my name at the top of her voice would likely have freaked her out even more.

The central station and Sven's flat were easy enough to find. I was amused to hear Geordie accents in the streets, but as it was too early for me to be feeling homesick and they sounded a bit pissed, I ignored them.

Sven's flat was a typical European house share with a comforting laissez-faire attitude, interesting denizens, a dizzyingly steep ramshackle staircase up to it, and odd objects littered about the place, such as the double bass abandoned by a previous tenant.



When Sven came in, we had a couple of the beers I'd brought and then we went around the bars of Antwerp. Sven lent me one of his bikes, a single-speed with no brakes except a back pedal brake. Even though it was after eleven, the bars were bustling and showed no sign of lagging. I'm still used to the eleven o'clock licensing laws in England, which still have the effect that everyone is pissed before eleven.

Since I hadn't eaten, I was pissed before eleven that night as well. I remember eating some fries with gravy in the street, ordering drinks in approximate Dutch, touring around the red light district on the bikes and nearly getting in a fight with a short, fat, Dutch Freddie Mercury lookalike. I also remember the hangover, which guaranteed that I'd be spending at least another day in Antwerp.

Darlo to Hull: 11/09/2011 and 12/09/2011

I was getting sick of goodbyes. My sister and brother-in-law turned up at the doorstep and said they wanted to ride to Croft with me. Since I wasn't ready yet, I said they might as well come in for a coffee. But they said they wanted to go now - hey wait, I'm setting off to cycle to the other side of the world and I'm going to be gone for over a year, and you're hassling me for time? I'm never very chipper in the mornings, and I was glad to get that bout of goodbyes out of the way. They left without me.

In Northallerton I was meeting a few friends to ride to York. I was a bit worried that I'd set off later than planned, but I needn't have worried, since Jonathan was an hour later than me. Being late was a theme for the day - Phil and Jonathan and Elsa and I rode down to York through Topcliffe and Helperby Brafferton and Shipton and stopped for a pint (and a half) just outside York, which made us late for dinner at Kat's. Kat had asked me what food I'd miss most about England - I weighed up the options and told her that it would be a full roast dinner with Yorkshire puddings and roast potatoes and all the trimmings. Typically, she went and made this for me, despite having fractured her shoulder on the Friday night. Thanks, Kat! And to think, I'd nearly said I'd miss fish finger sandwiches the most...

Kat's house was full of kids and friends, and leaving was hard, but I rode out towards Beverley with Martin and Greg for more beer at a pub in Elvington. They both returned west, leaving me on my own for the last 25 miles to Beverley, where I was staying with my oldest friend, Matt. We've known each other for 28 years, on and off.



I knew I was late, so I rode along the busy A1072 from Market Weighton to Beverley. On a Sunday night there wasn't a lot of traffic, but as it was late the light was fading and I did worry a little about some of the driving going on. I wasn't, however, worried enough to miss the moon rising in front of me over the North Sea as I crossed the Wolds.

The road into Beverley is a beautiful run through the commons known as the Westwood. It was perfectly atmospheric in the twilight, and I was soon at Matt's for more beer and food. I noticed that I'd ridden 98 miles that day, and I was tempted to ride a few times around the block to make it up to a round hundred, but beer and food were calling, and I was already late.

That was my last goodbye of a day where there too many, but they were good goodbyes, and a day of seeing so many friends couldn't be such a bad day.

The next day I rode the 20 miles to Hull docks. Heavy seas and high winds when we were leaving port. Goodbye to these shores.

the leaving of Darlo

My name's Dean Clementson (though I prefer Deano) and in September 2011 I set off to cycle to Australia. Probably Australia, anyway.

I left my job (whıch I didn't like very much), I left my home town and my friends and famıly (whıch I like a great deal) to go cycling...somewhere.

When I left England I had only vague destinations in mind: Istanbul, where I would apply for visas for the next stage (and decide whether I wanted to continue); India, which I'd always wanted to visit; Australia, where there wıll be a total solar eclipse in November 2012. East.

It was probably very naive to set off with no visas and such a vague plan, but on Sunday 11th September 2011 I rode south from Darlington towards the ferry at Hull. As I was crossing the Wolds at Market Weighton, climbing away from the Vale of York with the sun settıng behind me, the last rays of the setting sun on my last full day in England touched my shoulders and lit the huge full moon which was risıng ahead of me, calling me east. I was off.