September 14, 2012
To Speyer
It was a rather different bike ride today; we hardly saw the river at all. We knew that we had to get through Mannheim and the city just across the river from it, Ludwigshaven, and thought it would be rather a nightmare but that wasn’t to be the case at all. When we were about 11km out of Ludwigshaven we started to strike the industrial area and our hearts dropped thinking that it would be like this for hours. We were wrong. The track swung inland passing through very pleasant suburbs interspersed with farm land. Then we came to an absolutely lovely area. It was wood land with tracks running through it, I think called Maudacherbruchwald. This was clearly close to the city as it was packed with people having a great time. They were walking dogs and babies, running, cycling and just generally enjoying themselves. After about two hours we were almost through Ludwigshaven, but still hadn’t found a coffee. Never mind we found one shortly later in the lovely neat little town of Altrip.
Our aim for the day was Speyer and what a great place it is. The centre of the town is very lively and full of interest. It is very busy and the very helpful lady at the tourist information with some difficulty found us a room – the place is full. The only problem is the hotel an Ibis (recently taken over from another chain) it is absolutely terrible slightly grubby with a stained carpet,pillows smelling of stale smoke, the hand basin is all cracked, the internet connection doesn’t work (they have run out of cards and won’t have any until tomorrow), there is a computer in the lobby, it doesn’t work either (same reason), the TV reception is so bad with snow and static you can’t watch it and all this for 95Euros a night – as much as we have paid anywhere. Hope we don’t get food poisoning from the breakfast !
We struck the jackpot as the Dom was having a series of concerts and there were two on today. At 4.30 a children’s concert explaining Haydn and a Haydn Oratorio in the evening. We chose the children’s concert because of the time. There were lots of well scrubbed children with parents and grandparents and the choir as well as the adult members had children as well, Ken was delighted as the horn, trombone and trumpet parts were all on original instruments and of the soloists the Bass had magnificent presence and Ken was most impressed by the Soprano. The commentary was of course completely lost on us but it must have been funny in parts as the audience laughed. On the whole the kids listened well apart from the usual few. The three little girls in front of us were obviously training to be apprentice hair dressers as they plaited and unplaited each others hair and the boys next to me spent the time working out how they could put their shirts and jackets on backwards. We thoroughly enjoyed the concert and the acoustics in a huge old stone cathedral like that are unmatched.
Today's ride: 62 km (39 miles)
Total: 2,517 km (1,563 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 0 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |