DAY 17 & 18 
16 - 17   AUGUST 2021 
FRANKFURT TO BINGEN AM RHEIN - 80 MILES
BINGEN AM RHEIN TO BAD HONNEF - 75 MILES

Tuesday 17th, David headed off to the airport for the hassle of check in and Covid documentation, and the flight home.  I think I’ve worked out that all the faff around the various documentation and tests that you need for travelling these days is probably no worse than navigating the Ryanair online check in and baggage check when you fly with that airline.  You just need to know what you are doing, and once you’ve done it, then it isn’t as complicated as it might first seem. So fly !  Get away !

I reclaimed my bike which had been kept safe and secure in its metal container, and started off along the Main westwards to join the Rhine and then to head north.  The confluence of two huge rivers such as the Main and the Rhine at Mainz is disappointing. It’s just two huge but gentle rivers meeting, no big swirl or anything like that. 

The ride along the Rhine to Bingen (where I think Hildegard of Bingen came from, but I can’t for the life of me remember what she was about - music, spirituality….?) was, well, more and more Rhine river, set between rock faces on either side, cycling along a cycle path which is next to a road, which is next to a railway line.  And that is on both sides of the river.  The Rhine has been, and still is, and will be for thousands of years to come, a main route north south.  It is still used by river traffic, huge cargo barges, and by the freight trains that go past every few minutes.

My hotel is Bingen was run by a very bossy German Frau with a gravel voice, with a sort of take it or leave it attitude, but it was just the kind of place I needed, utilitarian and central for getting something to eat and drink after my exertions.  

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And then on Wednesday 18th I was off up the Rhine again, flipping from side to side as the whim took me by the really very numerous little ferries.  There are not a lot of bridges across the Rhine, either because they were never built, or they were built and then destroyed in WW2 and not rebuilt.  At Remagen the bridge was supposed to be destroyed by the Germans before the Americans arrived, but not very successfully, so that when the Americans got there it was still mostly standing so they were able to use it, but 10 days later it collapsed killing quite a number of American engineers who were working on it.  It’s not been rebuilt.  But, there is a ferry now.

Tonight, I’m in Bad Honnef on the eastern bank, a lovely small spa town, quite classy in that German, tidy, unglitzy, unblingy, serious sort of way.  The hotel I’m in was apparently a health sanatorium, the sort of place earnest Germans would have come to take the waters years ago.  Or, it might have the look of a place where German officers might have come for R & R after being at the front.  Anyhow, it has been modernised and is very nice in that uncluttered , sober and serious German way.  As is the town.  I quite like the feel and the look.

I notice that Boris got a bit of a grilling in the Commons today.  I don’t think there is any doubt that he was take by surprise, firstly by the US precipitate withdrawal, and then by the collapse of the Afghan resistance to the Taliban.  Refugees will be the next big issue.  I’m very sympathetic to people who find themselves in really impossible circumstances and fear of their lives.  So, we should do all we can to help as much as is possible.  However, I am always a bit surprised that the bulk of those who make up refugees are young men, and I would have thought in the case of Afghanistan that they are precisely the ones who should be staying to offer opposition rather than scarpering ?  I was interested to hear that Biden mentioned the reluctance of the Afghans to fight for themselves.  But, I’m aware that it’s easy for me here in my Rhine idyll.  I’ll leave the big decisions to Boris, and see where that gets us !