I got going early with a fear of a new thunderstorm which never came. I felt very smug having examined the ‘shorter distance’ route that the Garmin arranged for me on my map and it looked like a nice twisty route free from those boringly efficient motorways. However before 10 minutes of riding I was lost and after surrendering to Emily (the name of the Bitish voice) I found myself on what looked suspiciously like motorways to me. I must have been dehydrated because shortly after one stop for coffee and an almond croissant at a service station where all the white ad red uniformed staff were assembled outside for a photograph I felt woozy enough to stop at a parking platz mit WC and drink huge amounts of water and wash out my sore eye (I blame it on the pillowlessness of this trip). Just when I was getting despondent my route took me onto the lovely twisty, empty recently tarmaced roads that I really enjoy; they weave in and out of pine woods, getting dark and damp and beautifully scented, then out into the sunshine again. I arrived at this final campsite of the trip as I did the last one, with a doubting heart. By today I was feeling that I have had one or two more camping days than I really wanted. I arrived at lunchtime with a queue of others waiting to get on the site. The lady running the place only had a few words of English but she directed me to the space for tents. I followed the route past the huge always white mobile homes and caravans to a cute field right away from everyone else and I set up camp in the shade (its been really hot and humid today) and right next to a gurgling stream. This has been the nicest spot I’ve had so far. I’ve even paid for wireless internet access which i am doublful about ever working. For 3 euro I get ein stunde (one hour to you). <\/p>\n
I walked up to the nearby town with the fantasy of purchasing some pork, white wine and cream to cook a last delicious meal in my private little corner (by the way I forgot to say that I have my very own park bench \u2013 so the chairlessness problem is solved). I found the town extremely strange with a number of shrines and then shops that sold a range of goods that corresponded to nothing I had ever come across. Of course I was looking for a supermarket but a butcher would have done. The first emporium resembling a supermarket sold crisps, warm wine and beer and the rest was haircare products. I replaced my wire basket and kept looking. The only other place resembling a supermarket had about 20 various items layed out in the space that you might normally expect to see 200. The owner was an unamused man with a moustache and long grey hair using a 1960s vintage cash register. Was this some kind of statement? I’m not sure. Ive bought a red pepper a leek, two beers (cold) and some Kirsh filled chocolate. He gave me a box to carry them back down the road to the site. <\/p>\n
I’ve spotted the only other Brit I’ve seen on this trip, sitting reading ‘Mystery man’ with his feet up on a red LDV ex-Parcelforce van just up the field. I plan to accost him with the greeting ‘Where’s my parcels, then?’ Also in my field are a sweet German couple, she seems to have had a stroke and was almost speechless when I first tried to strike up my hopeless German conversation as we waited for the counter to open, and another man from Denmark, casually flaunting a colostomy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I got going early with a fear of a new thunderstorm which never came. I felt very smug having examined the ‘shorter distance’ route that the Garmin arranged for me on my map and it looked like a nice twisty route free from those boringly efficient motorways. However before 10 minutes of riding I was…Read more Thursday 2nd July<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}