Bikepacking 2025 - Rest day in Koblenz

 

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It's a rest day, here in Koblenz.

After breakfast, we followed a self-guided walking tour and saw quite a bit of the old town. There were fountains, statues and various buildings whose architecture we admired. 

At Deutsches Eck, the Moselle and the Rhine meet. There's also an impressive monument with some bloke on a big horse right at the top. M2 tried to encourage M1 to scale the monument and horse and have his photo taken sat on it. M1 was not to be persuaded but not because such an act would have been naughty in the extreme. No, it was because his legs are somewhat "knackered" after cycling nearly 350 miles in five days! Otherwise, obviously he'd have been up for it. Honest, guv.

There were tour guides dragging tourists around all over the place. They looked like they were passengers from one of the many river cruises. None of them looked particularly happy.

Around the corner from Deutsches Eck there's a cable car. We bought tickets online and were almost the first customers. It was surprisingly quiet given all the guided tours going on and we had an empty car all to ourselves.

We glided high above the river, up to the top of the cliffs on the other side and enjoyed the view.

There's a fortress at the top but it's used now as a collection of museums and galleries that we didn't have any appetite for. So, after trying and failing to find coffee we just jumped on a cable car and returned to where we'd started.

Sightseeing done, we bought stuff at a supermarket, went back to our nice apartment and spent some time researching, planning and organising the remainder of our trip. We're ahead of schedule so have modified our route so that we can spend a couple of days in Utrecht, something M2 in particular wanted to do.

We're back on the bikes tomorrow with a relatively short ride ahead of us.

The eagle eyed may notice a change to M1's bike tomorrow. The Mule's front mudguard had been causing a few problems, trapping stones and other bits and pieces. It refused to cooperate when attempts to position it higher above the wheel were made so it ended up in a bin. It was a cheap plastic affair and we're not expecting there to be much mud to guard against. Let's hope we're not wrong!

Whilst walking around Koblenz, we'd encountered temporary stages that had been set up in some of the small squares. There was no information that we could see but clearly something was planned.

From our apartment later in the evening, we could hear music! We headed out into the streets and found the nearest stage. We had a laugh watching a very competent band rattle through a series of crowd pleasing cover versions of hits from across the decades. They were great fun. At another square we watched a Simon and Garfunkel tribute band. All good. 

Thank you, Koblenz and good night!

Solar

The solar energy experiment is still going extremely well. M1's power bank has still not been charged from a wall outlet. Amazing. M1's Kindle was charged directly from the solar panel today as well.

Photos