Day 13, riding home from Neuwied
Thursday, June 4, 2015
Today was the last day of our trip. We went from Neuwied back home to the Netherlands.
I had been riding to the geyser and the Laacher See on wednesday so I had a little less
fuel in my tank then Dick had in his, but an hour or so riding would be no problem so we
decided to stop to fuel-up after a hundred kilometer.
We left the hotel parking at half past eight and went over the bridge over the Rhine and
then we followed the road on the bank of the Rhine. A wonderful road with a nice view on
the Rhine Valley.
A wonderful road with a nice view on the Rhine Valley
I had been walking along the Rhine, and taken pictures, when I was visiting the Andernach
Geyser but Dick had not so when I saw a parking, I stopped and we took a few pictures of
the river.
A ship going upstream in the Rhine
A last picture before we went away from the Rhine.
We came through a lot of very quiet villages. There was very few traffic on the roads
too so we wondered why. Later we found out that the fourth of June is a German holiday.
"Corpus Christi" is a legal holiday in the provinces Baden Wuerttemberg, Bavaria, Hesse,
Northrhine Westphalia, Rhineland Palatinate and Saarland and we were in Rhineland
Palatinate.
Quiet village
Flags in the street because of "Corpus Christi"
We avoided the autobahn but sometimes we saw the autobahn in the distance, or sometimes
above us.....
The autobahn, high in the sky
We liked riding roads like this
At a quarter past ten, I saw a big golden M on an industrial area along the road near Duren
so we left the main road and found a "Westfalen Tankstelle" next to a Mc Donald's. The
perfect combination (for me it is, Dick is not so fond on Mc Food). It was funny that
we had planned to ride a hundred kilometer to our first stop and here we had exactly done
that, give and take a few meters.
But first things first, so we filled our tanks and then went to the Mc Donald's. I had my first
milkshake in days and enjoyed it  .
At the Mc Donald's in Duren
The land was slowly looking more like our scenery in the Netherlands. No mountains anymore
and straight roads.
Straight roads instead of mountains with bends and hairpins
It was about half past eleven when we crossed the Dutch border for the first time.
Back in the Netherlands
Less then an hour later, we crossed a border again, from the Netherlands into Belgium and
in the village Maaseik, at the border, we had a very nice big cheese sandwich at
"t Poortje".
Restaurant 't Poortje in Maaseik
The first half hour in Belgium was spend on nice country roads but after a while ran into some
deviations because of road construction and we ended up riding on four lane roads with lots of
traffic and traffic lights.
The nice kind of road
At almost two o'clock, we were getting thirsty again (it was warm) and in Lommel, we
had a cold cola in "Broodjesbar Plaza" on the junction of the N71 and the N746.
Broodjesbar Plaza in Lommel
Before we got back on the main road, I noticed an interesting shop. Jac's Custom Cycles is a
Harley-Davidson and chopper shop. We went inside and saw a beautiful collection of vintage
Harleys.
Jac's Custom Cycles, Buitensingel 8 in Lommel in Belgium
We wanted to get on the freeway and ride home in an hour and a half but we ran out of luck.
We first got stuck in a traffic jam on the freeway. Just when we wanted to leave the freeway
at an exit, the traffic jam resolved, so being an optimist, I decided to stay on the freeway.
I was wrong, there was another traffic jam because of an accident and there was an electronic
sign that said "41 minutes delay" so this time when we saw an exit, we left the freeway.
Unfortunately this was no good either. I think the whole Northern part of Belgium was filled
with cars and traffic lights so it took us almost three hours in the heat in our warm
motorcycle clothes, to ride the last hundred kilometer. It was remarkable that as soon as
we crossed the border into the Netherlands, the trafficjams were gone and we could ride again.
At a quarter to five, we arrived at Dick's house and his wife took the "end of our trip" picture
before I left to meet my wife after two weeks.
The end of our wonderfull trip at Dick's house
At about five o'clock in the afternoon, I finally arrived home again after riding two thousand
nine hundred enjoyable kilometer (except for the last hundred kilometer traffic jams in
Belgium).
Back home
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