May 31: Day 30, Düsseldorf-Castrop-Rauxel
First day back on the bike today. I was having some worries about this: I was tired the whole time I was in Amsterdam, and wasn't sure how much energy I'd have when I started cycling again. Would I be able to go up hills? Or even move? Happily, the answer was yes; so I guess four days was enough rest.
Today was a short day. We'd need to take the train back to Düsseldorf, and that'd leave half a day for actual cycling. (Or less … it took 6 hours for that trip on Friday.) So to be safe I planned a route a bit under 4 hours.
To back up a bit: “we”? Yep, I’m cycling with a friend for two days, he’s interested in seeing if this bikepacking thing is as glamorous and exciting as I’ve made it sound! Since I never exaggerate for dramatic effect, there’s no imaginable way this could end in disappointment.
We were booked on the 0824 train, and when buying the tickets had been assured that we could take bikes on that train: but when we got there the conductor politely said nee and booted us off because bikes aren’t allowed on trains during peak times. Quite glad we hadn’t tried to take the 0724 train…
So we were delayed. But peak time is 0630-0900 so it was only a little. We got on the 0902 to Arnhem, changed there, got to Düsseldorf and were on the road before 1300.
The route out of the station were not great. There was no cyclepath so we were on the road, and there were a couple of surprise turnoffs across traffic which are never good. (Especially since I was doing the navigating, and every mistake means I need to pull over and provide a new route as well as a mea culpa.) But after that we were on an actual cyclepath again, which was mostly separated from traffic and provided a fairly straightforward run out of the city. Bit surprised that there aren’t good cyclepath connections to the station - maybe we took a bad direction? Not impressed.
There was 16km/h of headwind but I’ve complained about such things so I’ll not do so this time.
From left to right: Arnhem station is growing lavender. Random road in Ratigen-Eggerscheidt. Rail trail! And a bridge on the rail trail.
There were also hills! And quite a bit of cycling on rail trails. So there was nice variety for a short day; we arrived at 5.
The biggest drama of the day was a bit of a misunderstanding about whether we should push, and we ended up doing some heavy cycling into the wind which, it turned out later, neither of us actually wanted to do!
Tomorrow is slightly shorter but there should be some coffee break stops to compensate. Hope the weather stays good.
And since today was half a rest day here’s the bubble waffles I had tonight, in a shop that could be a location from the Barbie movie.
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