June 1: Day 31, Castrop-Rauxel-Osnabrück
Today's route is to Osnabrück, and it's a slightly short day: 6.5 hours. The route looks quite direct on the map, which means efficient but also means no rail trails...
It did include a bit of time along canals though, happily. The day started by following another road whose cyclepath regularly borrowed the sidewalk. (In Spain this would be just fine but I've been spoilt recently.) It then ran alongside the canal for a kilometer. Unfortunately there was a very gentle glide-off, onto a road that slowly ascended to a bridge. We didn’t take it. Since the two were next to each other GPS didn't see a problem, and we didn't realize that we'd gone the wrong way until we'd passed the bridge; and then had to retrace our steps for a few hundred meters to a place we could cross over.
From left to right: the canal, glide-off not quite visible yet. Bridges I liked the look of.
We stopped in Munster for lunch, at a cafe recommended by Google Maps. There were quite a few vegetarian options on the menu but it wasn't until food arrived that we figured out that it was actually a vegetarian cafe - the meat was a vegetarian substitute, but it was very well done. We had a coffee afterwards and there was no regular milk; and learned that the cafe was not vegetarian but fully vegan! But the food was impressively well prepared; I had a muffin and the texture wasn't quite the same as usual but it was pretty close.
The afternoon had a bit of a climb - only about 120m, but after all this flat terrain it was a bit of work.
Komoot had a bit of a freakout on the outskirts of Osnabrück. At the end of the day it occasionally crashes and stops recording the route I'm taking, but still provides directions. But we'd missed a turnoff while the app was dead, and when I restarted it, it put a waypoint back there to indicate where to go to rejoin the planned route. We were a few kilometers down the road and it led where we wanted to go so we just kept going ... and Komoot kept asking us to do a U-turn and go back. Near the end it thought there was 36km to go (ie, about 18km back to the waypoint, then 18km along the other way to the destination). Not good. We used Google Maps to navigate. Next time it happens I'll plan a fresh route or something.
From left to right: a second section on a canal. Separate lights and barrier for the cycle path. Impressive graffiti art seen while walking around that evening.
A pretty good day! We arrived in Osnabrück just after 5, which was early - but intended, because we had appointments, and wanted an early dinner. My travelling companion was heading back to Amsterdam by train tonight. I had a ticket to see the movie "Across The Spider Verse" but unfortunately it was in German, without even English subtitles, so I'll need to see it again to understand what actually happened…
