Cologne; September 2015
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An Unplanned Stay near Antwerp
My cousin David plays fiddle for the Kolner Philharmonie (Cologne Philharmonic) and is always inviting me over so on the spur of the moment I decided to take a trip over. The plan was to take Eurotunnel out on Wednesday 2nd September. I wasn't sure about when I was returning as I was thinking about going on to the Harz mountains and possibly Berlin. As it turned out, owing to the weather I didn't get any further than Cologne returning on Eurotunnel Sunday 6th September. I hadn't ridden the Blackbird too much so I decided to give it a run out to Germany and back.
For Wednesday and Thursday nights, David had arranged for me to stay with his friend Malcolm who lives just outside Antwerp on the Belgium - Netherlands border. The plan was for me to tour around the area on Thursday but the weather was so awful that Malcolm ended up driving me around. Had a nice plate of mussels at a Dutch restaurant called De Viskeete at the town of Yerseke. (The restaurant is a spin-off a big mussel farming concern they have there.) In a bar that night the TV showed the Dutch national football team go down to Iceland 1-0. The Dutch were looking depressed. Being English I had no problem sympathising with them.
On Friday morning it was still raining hard but it had cleared up a bit by midday which is when I left for Cologne. I stayed Friday and Saturday night at my cousin's place in Cologne. The weather was awful again on Saturday. I spent the morning listening to the Kolner Philharmonie with my cousin rehearsing which was a very different experience for me. In the afternoon, the rain came on really hard and kept going through to evening. We had a nice meal that evening and managed to get out a bit later on to tour the district.
By Sunday morning the weather had crushed my spirit and I had abandoned plans to go further into Germany. What was worse is that Britain was enjoying lovely weather. Sunday looked like being a half decent day weatherwise before it got worse again on Monday so I chose to return home. I left Cologne just after 10pm and was back home in Dorset by 5pm. Not bad going I thought seeing as though it had taken just over an hour to cross the channel. (No complaints about Eurotunnel by the way. Good service.) I had ridden over 900 miles in total, about 430 miles on the return trip. It was motorway all the way. Yes it was quick but boy was it boring?