This could save your life

I found this in the advice section of the German Motor Club (ADAC) magazine. This information was new to me. If you are cycling in flat country or at the top of a hill and are caught out in a thunderstorm, then get off your bike. Move away from it to a distance of several metres (yards). A lightening flash which strikes your bike could jump over to you if you are too near. The next piece of advice was given to me as a Boy Scout. So not lie completely flat but sit or kneel down so that you are a small target.

Budget Eating in Europe

It has happened to most of us despite our good intentions and rapid forays into bakeries or stores before we leave the railhead, it pours with rain, the temperature plunges and the picnic on the trail is just going to be miserable. Or it can be that you simply have no food with you. In the UK we know that Garden Centres often incorporate excellent cafes and are located on the edges of towns. Reading through various cycling publications makes it clear that these are a boon to the cycling fraternity, since many older teashops have disappeared.
In Germany we’ve found that many supermarkets boast both bakeries and coffee shops, with savoury snacks and all manner of cakes. Discounters and similar outlets have sprung up here too, often on the margins of towns or marked by their signs and flags visible from the cycleway along the river or canal. Well-known furniture stores and other emporia have cafeterias, open from morning until 7 or 8 pm, which offer a great range of dishes, hot and cold, with salad and fruit options to suit almost every taste. OK it is NOT Haute Cuisine, but it is certainly not chips with everything or even ‘portion control’. Prices for a main dish will range from 7-10€, whilst drinks range from about 2.50€ for a normal coffee to a little more for the exotic variety. Beer or wine too, if you fancy them, but don’t forget a bike is a road vehicle like a car and 0.5 is the limit.
Leave your bikes outside, well locked up in the racks and grab a shopping trolley to stick your panniers in and take it with you, there are usually parking areas around the seats. No one will bat an eyelid if you are in complete ‘Tour de France’ gear or in T-shirt and your Dad’s old plus fours. We saw a young man, black singlet, baggy trousers and bare feet sipping a coffee shop latte a few weeks ago, when there was snow on the ground and the temperature close to 0 C. Chacun a son gout and why not!
Within shopping malls there is a choice of many eating styles and foods, some where you stand or perch, where you can have assembled a rocket sized baguette of this or that, collect a great hunk of tasty pizza, plus the usual fast food eateries we know and love or dislike. It will be warm or air conditioned cool inside, usually dry apart from the odd fountain and much more comfortable than the alternative bus shelter or overhanging eave of a barn and its nearby dung heap. It won’t break the bank either. If you are really not keen on waste you can eat your picnic in the evening, as long as your sandwich is well protected from the downpour. We know, we have done all of these things.
We have eaten in the Co-op and Migros chains in Switzerland, where the Swiss Franc goes further and in many French shopping complexes. With what you save you can afford a special meal, candlelight tete a tete, plus the local tipple later on in the trip. A recent feast in Tounus, Burgundy (Bresse chicken pate in pastry, roast hare, and a lemon dessert, plus several little appetisers) was truly delicious but the cost somewhat eye-watering!
Hospitals (Krankenhäusen or Klinik) too are often outside towns and have eating places open to the public, probably intended to mean patients and visitors, but we do know people who eat in hospital cafeterias at least once a week. Many staff and visitors cycle to hospitals here, wearing cycling clothing...so there really is no choice between freezing to death under a hedge at lunchtime or parking your bike and finding the hospital cafe. The hospital folks might get a bit upset if a huge party of tourers appeared, but a friendly group of four or so would be unlikely to be noticed.

Brushing off the cobwebs

The last two winters have been very mild here in Germany’s Rhine Valley so our folding bikes have been used throughout the darker months. We do our local errands and occasionally dash off on the rough tracks in nearby woods on crisp sunny days. In February a run of frosty mornings followed by spring-like afternoon temperatures tempted us to lift down our mountain bikes, pump up the tyres and dislodge the odd spider. Not that the run over the farm roads to visit friends in the next town but one really merited the MTBs but, maybe we’d run into a cowpat or find the road blocked by earth tremor. It just seemed the right kind of weather so we pulled on the wind proofs and persuaded our elderly legs into can-can position over the crossbars and headed north. Without saying a word both of us set off at a cracking pace round the edge of the town and alongside the drainage ditches running parallel to the Odenwald Hills to our right. Birds were twittering in the bushes, the hills rose in greens and browns, and we arrived at our friend’s house slightly out of breath and ready for coffee, cake and conversation. The return journey’s pace was more moderate, perhaps as a result of being tempted by strawberry topped tart and delicious cheese cake. As we returned the bikes to our cellar, both of us were convinced that spring really was around the corner and we’d be biking longer routes very shortly.
We should have known better for the weather gods still needed a bit of winter fun and a series of violent storms blasted through our area, destroying lots of trees and causing a few deaths. The German weather service give names to low and high pressure systems, which people can give as presents to their loved ones. We’re not sure that we’d like to be remembered as ‘low Neil’ which wreaked death and destruction across half a country or ‘high Judith’, responsible for the worst drought since records began, but there’s no accounting for folk. Expeditions by bike were minimal, necessary journeys close to home as the weather nastiness rose to a crescendo over Easter. Snow, which had held off all winter finally coated the garden and the Odenwald hilltops were white for days as temperatures hovered in that unpleasant range just above freezing. On Easter Sunday we caught the tram into Mannheim, bought an English Sunday paper at the station and marched for 40 minutes along the Rhine upstream before and even more rapid about turn to catch the tram home to warmth, cups of tea and a (home-made) hot cross bun.
A week later temperatures were back at mid February level and we could cycle by Brompton into Mannheim to buy our weekly fix of news from home. It was wonderful, after our enjoyable bike ride, to read about the tribulations of the new T5 at Heathrow. Schadenfreude can be so enjoyable, especially when no one has been hurt physically. What a turnaround could have been achieved for ordinary public transport, plus storage facilities for cyclists at bus and train stations, with all those billions of pounds. There would be no prestige, little razzmatazz but quite possibly all might have gone according to plan, and saved the planet to boot!