Rolling with the Rhine

Have just had a cruisy week pedalling down the Rhine with a Berlin-based friend (aka 'Hildegard') - starting at bustling old Heidelberg and ending (train-assisted) with the gothic spires and gargoyles of Cologne.

The days were clear – which I understand is an anomaly for this German summer – and packed with vines and wines, castles, medieval villages and aquatic traffic (and a fair bit of ugly industry and electricity towers, but if you squint a bit, it all looks lovely).

Much to Flash’s relief, we sent the tent back home and have been mostly staying in quirky little guesthouses along the river and waking up with church bells in the morning.

One of the nicest things about the guesthouses is the ceremony of fruhstuck or breakfast. Guests are shown to their tables in the special fruhstuck zimmer, greeting other guests as they enter and then share a fruhstuck buffet and some heart-starting beverages.

As Jane Austen would have said (had she been cycling down the Rhine with us in anything other than the book I’m reading), “to wish one’s fellow fruhstuckers a pleasant morning and a hearty appetite is a very agreeable exercise in cordiality and good will”.