Thirteen Wheels in Germany – August 2018 (Month 53)

Cycling this month

This month I cycled less than I might have expected for a summer month, but I am happy to ride just when I feel like it and not overdo it. Klaus is doing loads of riding as it makes him feel good, but I am taking it a bit more easily, as you can see from the information below about my rides.

And here is where I went this month:

The start of August continued really hot, and I decided eventually to use the heat to do a job I should have done a long time ago – replace the Union Jack sticker on the back of Millie. The sticker I bought two years ago was from a BMW mini and the quality was a bit poor (it was very cheap!) and the colour had been worn away where my fingers used to grip Millie’s rear to move her (before I had the lift hole put in).

Anyway, I had originally planned to get a local firm to do it but then I decided it would be worth trying myself, as a good sized roll of vinyl wrap is only 6 Euros. So I ordered blue and red (and also black for the Versatile when it returns from service) and chose a warm day (helps vinyl to be stretched and to stick) to do the job.

Firstly I had to take the old sticker off. It left most of the adhesive behind (of course!) so I used a lot of elbow grease. When I finished there were a couple of stubborn lines of adhesive where the edge of the sticker had been. I remembered I had some isopropyl alcohol upstairs and that cleared the adhesive in no time at all. If I had remembered it earlier I could have used it to avoid 2 hours of elbow grease. But never mind.

I didn’t have a great plan of how to do the flag on Millie, I decided to just see how easy it was to work the vinyl. The red stripes were really easy, it turned out.

I could only do one stripe before I had to return indoors to cool down, so the procedure was quite slow. I cut a template from a large sheet of paper and then used that to cut the vinyl.

The blue bits in between were easy below the middle but the upper section on both sides was horrendous due to the curved shape at the top. It took 6 goes on one side and 2 on the other, and I am not happy with either really. But I ran out of blue having wasted so much…

Still, it was a huge improvement over the old sticker and the blue is nice and shiny.

A couple of days later I took Millie inside our office building due to mega rain. I think she looks pretty good in our reception area!

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Celeste is now in Ralf’s Warehouse at his home so our second garage only had Alfie the trike in for this month. Which was rather handy, as there was renovation work going on and there was no chance to get to our garage! Our garage is the closed door between the two open doors in this photo.

And the exit route is not exactly Velomobile-friendly!

The owner is working on clearing everything away and it is just about possible to reach the garage now. I won’t need it for a few weeks yet, but fairly soon the new Versatile will appear so it will be used to store Millie or the Versatile at that time.

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One of our Sunday rides took us to Café Winthuis and from there we decided to pop to Weeze airport to have a look around. This used to be an RAF station and it turns out there is a museum there. It wasn’t open on Sunday morning but is open Sunday afternoons so I would like to go and have a look around sometime.

We watched a couple of Ryanair planes arrive, and lots of holidaymakers walk past, and then decided to head home via a different route. We managed to find a bicycle-only route out of the airport which went directly to the Netherlands, so we rode home along the oft-used Ceresweg route and then up to Straelen, where we stopped for a waffle.

We had to fight away the wasps a lot. It’s been a pretty waspy time in August.

A visit to Dronten for a Humphrey repair

Klaus and I were riding home from Moers after meeting for cake one evening when I challenged him to ride up the really steep hill to Tönisberg. Despite having worked all day and ridden to work and most of the way back (85km) he seemed game for the challenge and headed off up the very steep hill. I said I’d meet him at home and went on my way after watching him disappear over the brow of the hill.

When he arrived home he had some news – the gears had stopped working, they were constantly jumping and skipping around. He thought it was perhaps a broken gear cable, but when we looked we realised it was something worse – a crack in the aluminium frame that holds the sprocket hanger.

This view was not novel to us, as velomobile chum Gerd had had a very similar issue when riding the Hamburg Berlin Köln Hamburg a couple of weeks before:

We knew this meant a trip to Dronten to have the rear swing arm/axle disassembled and a new part welded, but fortunately Ralf had the Sprinter available to us and velomobiel.nl could fit us in for the repair.

Klaus had originally planned to do a 3 day cycle tour with a couple of other velomobile chaps to Zeeland in the west of the Netherlands (before Humphrey broke), and I had consequently arranged for a little trip myself to Leeuwarden, travelling by train and taking the dog as Gudula and Frank were away. I had booked myself a room in a most interesting hostel.

Once we realised Klaus would need to drive to Dronten, I suggested we made a weekend of it – that he stayed in Leeuwarden with me on the Saturday night and then, if he felt like it, rode Humphrey home on the Sunday. Klaus was still thinking about riding 300km and from Leeuwarden to Kempen is 270 so a good opportunity to do that long ride. So that was the plan…

We set off bright and early on the Saturday with Poppy the dog taking her turn as driver.

We arrived at Velomobiel.nl at ten in the morning, parked the van and then a large truck stopped behind us. The driver asked if we were leaving in the next few minutes as he had to make a delivery; we said no, we would be there a while (the repair to Humphrey was expected to take about four hours).

The truck driver told us he had driven from Romania. Aha! we thought. A delivery of new velomobiles… perhaps Klaus’s QuattroVelo is onboard. The guy opened the doors and…

Top right hand side looked rather like a blue and cream QuattroVelo. And when it was brought out of the truck, it was indeed Emily, Klaus’s new velomobile.

There were four QuattroVelos and a Quest on the truck:

There was also another British Racing Green QuattroVelo but with a white top rather than cream. Here is a picture with Humphrey on the right and the other on the left.

While we were there a guy turned up from Denmark to collect the British Racing Green and White Quattrovelo.

It was interesting to note that the green colour on this other QV was definitely more blue and less yellow than Humphrey’s, despite the fact it theoretically is exactly the same paint, bought from BMW Mini. What we also noticed was that the paint wasn’t as well done on the new QVs when they were two-tone, with the location of the join not always ideal. You can see on the photo below of Poppy and Emily, that the point of the paintwork on Emily’s nose is slightly to the right.

It was great to meet Emily and Klaus has clearly chosen an excellent colour!

Whilst we were there we also noticed a familiar-looking orange Strada arrive. Yes, it was Roef, coming for a repair to his rear light and a couple of other minor things. Small world!

Now on to the work on Humphrey.

Allert had to remove the entire rear swing-arm, which involves removing the rear wheels first. Once out, the entire rear area with the suspension gubbins was surprisingly empty!

The rear axle now had to be disassembled. I wasn’t watching this bit, I was out on a walk with the dog, but Klaus said it was rather complicated.

And then we could reach the broken bit on the axle.

Interestingly, the fault we had was not the same as that on Gerd’s Quattrovelo although the resulting break looked the same. Our seemed to be that there was an air gap between two pieces of aluminium where they should have been flush together. This enabled a small amount of movement that eventually caused the crack.

Whilst Humphrey’s swing arm was out, Allert added the extra welds that are being added to all QVs now due to a number of frame failures with earlier models.

This was all very exciting for Poppy so she needed a sleep. I popped her in the Sprinter and she found a decent pillow.

Allert put the swing-arm back into Humphrey.

Then it was just time for a test-ride (Klaus said all was fine – there were now different noises from the back but they were marginally quieter) and then we packed Humphrey into the Sprinter and headed off to Leeuwarden.

A visit to Leeuwarden

After we left Dronten we headed on the 110km drive to Leeuwarden.

As mentioned before, I had chosen the accommodation when booking just for myself coming by train. I like quirky things, and so couldn’t resist Alibi Hostel, which is inside a former prison!

There is a large series of buildings which have been converted into shops but also a section (Block H no less) has been retained in its prison form and is now the hostel.

The ground floor has shops, hairdressers etc. Floors 2 and 3 are the cells for the hostel.

The door to our cell:

And inside the cell. As it was a hostel we didn’t have en-suite bathroom and had to make our own beds up and strip them afterwards.

(Klaus is here making his one allowed phone call…)

The view out of the barred window:

And the door has now closed behind us…

We were asked if we wanted breakfast. I said yes of course, but was a little surprised that Klaus also agreed to it as he was planning his long ride the next day and breakfast didn’t start until 08:00. However, he knew he would need some fuel for the ride and there aren’t so many food options in NL on a Sunday morning.

We went out for an explore in Leeuwarden, dragging Poppy the dog along with us of course.

Within Blokhuispoort was this rather interesting artwork.

Leeuwarden is a very pretty town (as to be expected as it is the European Capital of Culture this year).

We found an Italian restaurant for our evening meal. As usual in the Netherlands, it seemed very expensive, but the food was OK and it was nice to sit and relax and watch the world go by.

We returned to the prison and settled down to sleep. Tomorrow was Klaus’s big cycling day!

The next morning we were ready very early so decided to go and extract Humphrey from the Sprinter which we had parked about 200 metres away. This meant Klaus would be ready to ride as soon as he had finished breakfast.

Humphrey seemed to have passed a reasonable night in a small car park behind some shops. We took him for a walk back to the Hostel.

The canal was very beautiful in the morning light.

We parked Humphrey outside the prison and went in for breakfast.

Breakfast was the usual – toast bread, boiled egg, a few slices of cheese or very processed ham, tea and coffee. Nothing very special but we ate plenty to prepare for the day – and to get the money’s worth from 7.50 Euros per person.

And then it was time for Klaus to set off. I had originally planned to hang around in Leeuwarden until the shops opened at 13:00 but decided very early on that was a waste of time as I had to check out of the prison by 11, so suggested to Klaus instead that we met for lunch in Elburg. He liked that plan!

After waving him off I stripped the beds as requested and chilled out a bit longer, before Poppy and I headed off to the Sprinter and to make our way to Elburg. Klaus had an hour and a half’s head start which wasn’t really enough as he had a four hour ride and we just needed one hour to drive. So when I was two thirds of the way to Elburg I stopped at a motorway parking place and checked on the tracker to see where Klaus was. Only 11km away! Very close to the motorway! So I decided to see if I could find him to give him some encouragement.

The tracker isn’t live unless you send it an SMS, it just sends a position every five minutes. So I headed to the last position, then when I was there I looked for the updated position and drove to that. I actually ended up doing lots of fiddly driving and I should have aimed a bit ahead of where Klaus seemed to be, but I didn’t have a copy of his route so didn’t know if he might suddenly unexpectedly strike off in a different direction. Every time I checked his position I parked the Sprinter of course, so it was a bit stop/start.

Eventually I knew he must be just around the corner – and he was, I caught sight of Humphrey who had just turned down a Wirtschaftsweg which is technically not for normal cars. But I drove down there anyway, and very quickly Klaus waved from Humphrey. He saw the giant blue Sprinter in his mirrors!

He stopped and we gave Poppy a chance for a sniff around.

After a five minute break I needed to turn the Sprinter round on what wasn’t a particularly wide road with a canal one side. I was rather hesitant during my 21 point turn, despite Klaus waving at me. The Sprinter felt a bit reluctant to roll  – the reason being the handbrake was slightly on, which I discovered once I was facing the right way and trying to drive off. Klaus went on his way and Poppy and I headed to Elburg.

We arrived in Elburg and had a little wander around, finding the least waspy café for lunch. I could see from the tracker that Klaus was about 10km away so I ordered an apple cake and a cuppa.

Klaus soon rolled into the centre of Elburg and was a brief distraction for all the diners. He had a sandwich and also a cake and took the time to really relax and drink. He said the route had been excellent, and he knew the rest of the route (apart from a stretch between Emmerich and Rees) was really good too. He was having a great ride!

After about an hour’s break Klaus headed on, with another 180km to home and perhaps an additional 30 required to make 300. Poppy and I drove straight to Ralf’s and swapped the Sprinter for Klaus’s car; I had wondered about hanging on to the Sprinter in case Klaus needed rescuing but Humphrey’s repair seemed to be fine and he was going well.

Klaus ended up riding 272km. About 15km from home in Sevelen he had to stop for 10 minutes as he had knee pain, and he had also had issues finding somewhere to eat and drink as the petrol station he planned on using in Doetinchem was closed and he had to carry on to Rees without much water. It was also dark for the final hour or so of his riding. In the end he decided to call it a day at the 272km when he reached home at 10:30pm – he had to get up at 5:30am the next morning for work so no point in riding for another hour and a half.

His total was 272.54km at an average speed of 25.5. He had purposely worked to keep his heart rate low and this had been successful with an average of 133 bpm. Contrast this with my 300km a few weeks before, when my average was 152 bpm.

It’s a lovely route and he would definitely like to do it again, but riding for 12 hours in a day is for Klaus, like me, a little too much. 200km is OK, but more becomes a bit dull as you always feel the pressure of time and can’t relax as much during breaks. But well done Klaus!

Balloon chasing

One Saturday morning Klaus and I were just bumbling about getting prepared for breakfast when we heard a strange sound. We quickly recognised it as burners from a hot air balloon, looked out of the window and saw a balloon really low overhead heading north. We watched it out of our kitchen window – it appeared to be coming into land. Klaus said, “Let’s chase it!”, so we threw on some cycling gear and headed off northwards towards Stenden. This reminds me of the balloon-chasing episode in Georgette Heyer’s novel Frederica, except we were riding velomobiles rather than a carriage with two horses.

Anyway, we soon saw that the balloon had landed just head of us, very near to the A40 motorway on a road next to a sweetcorn field.

Some cyclists had stopped in front of us as the path was blocked. We also saw the chase car arrive.

Klaus has previously had a balloon flight which he absolutely loved, and explained that you always offer to help with the balloon recovery, so we got out of the velomobiles and headed to be of some help. Well, with my disability I couldn’t really help, I just took photos, but Klaus got stuck in!

There were three passengers and the pilot in this small basket! Spot the velomobiles in the background!

The balloon had to be put into a huge bag. This involved lots of strength so they were probably very grateful that Klaus was there as the three passengers were all pretty elderly.

Once the balloon was in the bag they were allowed to sit on it to help reduce its size!

The last job was to heave the basket into the trailer.

After this they all had a drink and Klaus received a bottle of beer for his assistance and we chatted to them – mostly about velomobiles rather than balloons. The guy was very keen for Klaus to have another balloon flight and pressed his business card upon him.

Auntie Helen’s Brexit Preparations

I am really upset about Brexit and cannot believe what a mess it all seems to be. I am doing all that I can to prepare for a possible hard Brexit, although it’s tricky as there’s not actually much I can do about visas/permits to live here until the actual Brexit day.

But one thing I could do was change my driving licence for a German one. I had held off from doing this before as some of the things I am allowed to drive would be different, I had heard; I would have fewer categories of vehicles on my German licence. However, as I hadn’t ever really needed to drive these categories I thought it was OK.

I had to take my UK licence and passport to the Strassenverkehrsamt in Viersen where they took down details, took 20 Euro from me and said that I would be notified when the new licence was there.

Two weeks later I had a letter to say my new licence was ready and I would have to take my old one to give up. I cycled over there and picked up my new licence…

And here is an image of what I was able to drive on my old UK licence. As you see, I can drive most of these until I am 70 whereas the German licence only allows 5 years since the issue date of the UK licence it replaces (which was about two years ago). After that point I need a sight test and a medical approval to continue driving these classes of vehicle.

Still, the German licence doesn’t need to be renewed as often as the UK. Interestingly, there is no address on the German licence as they have the Ausweis for ID. I have had to explain to Germans several times than in the UK we use our licences as an unofficial ID card at times.

A quick visit to Mannheim

Klaus and I had an evening dash to his parents’ home near Mannheim on a Monday evening. This was because his mother, who had been very ill for some time, was reaching the end of her life. We arrived and Klaus spent some time with his mother, we talked to the palliative care nurse and then checked into a hotel. The following morning Klaus’s father rang him to say his mother had died at three in the morning. We will be returning to Mannheim so Klaus can attend the funeral in a few days’ time.

Cakes this month

Klaus and I have shared a fair few cakes this month, this is just a selection…

This is a low-carb Käse Sahne Torte which I made. Klaus liked it a lot, I was less keen (the sponge was a bit too hard). I am looking for a better recipe!

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