… day that I have the chance to ride in a rickshaw is it? but today I really did. A 1928 machine made by the Bombay Bicycle Company, as it happens.
Yes, I’m back in Eching in Germany and this is one of the many pieces of unusual equipment that my friend Hans happens to own.
Last night’s sleep in my luxury hotel was one of the best that I have had for quite some time – and that’s saying something because there have been some good ones just recently. I was up and about quite early too and had plenty of things to do before I left.
Like listen to the dictaphone
I was with a group of people last night and we were in the old Chemistry building in school, the H block and there was a football match taking place on the playing field. We all trooped off to one of the rooms to watch it. There was probably half a dozen of us – Zero, who has been with me on several nocturnal rambles over the years was there and a few others but we couldn’t see very much at all. The end room was the best one so we picked up all of our stuff, all our cables and leads and walked down to the end room. Surprisingly all these cables actually reached so we could get to the big picture window there and watch the game. The game was down the bottom field, people in green against people in blue and black and a similar team playing on a steep slope on a 5-a-side pitch. There was another couple of games going on and we couldn’t work out which was which. We came to the conclusion or decided that this wasn’t a very good place to be all. Something happened and we were like catapulted out of this room, two of us, me and a guy, and we ended up back down at the bottom so we walked along. By this time the people were sitting there and playing cards. This guy grabbed a seat as if to play cards and I stood there taking to everyone. There was a girl there who was dealing and she had a very heavy indented cleft palate with teeth growing up through the skin of her lips, like outside her lips. People were talking but it wasn’t about this game of football. This game of football had somehow disappeared so I don’t know what has happening about that now.
Later on, I’d had a schoolfriend and someone else in my car during the night and they’d left a pile of shopping behind so I went round to see them. My friend was very pleased to see me and I got loads of stuff out, bags of food that he had left behind. He didn’t really want it, thinking that I needed it but he didn’t want the coconut slices because they had been in contact with the inside of my holdall thing. Then he started to sit down to tell me that his sister had disappeared and how he would give all he owned to know that she was safe and brought back, and this was something that I could help him with.
And too right too. I was a big fan of his sister when we were at school and later, when she was at College in Manchester we had a few dates together. I should be so lucky!
Ironically, when I was musing over people who had been to accompany me on my nocturnal rambles, I’d mentioned this girl and I wondered why she had never come along with me. So here’s your answer. She’s disappeared off that particular ethereal plane.
No breakfast though today. I wasn’t hungry.
To start the day I went for a walk along the river bank to stretch my legs before I hit the road and despite it being so warm, there was a lovely early-morning mist rising up off the river but I didn’t think that it would last very long.
My ice cream stall was closed, as you might expect. Not that I was hungry of course, but it would have been nice to have had another one of those banana sorbets
The previous photo was looking east, or downstream, the way that I had come. This way is looking upstream to the west, the way that I was going.
As you can see, the River Danube is nice and wide, free-flowing and not too fast. It goes without saying that there’s a marina close by because it’s just the kind of place where your average weekend sailor can don his navy blue cap and blazer and have a little potter about on whatever passes for ocean waves around here.
But I bet that it’s not always this calm. The levées here would tell you everything about that, looking at the height and width of them. There must be some incredible floods around here in late spring when the snow is melting.
Carefully dodging the squadrons of cyclists out for an early-morning ride I walked some way along the path on top of the levée to see what I could see.
As you might expect with it being a kind of resort town on the river there are quite a few amenities for tourists such as inns, taverns, guest houses and the like. But I was eminently happy with where I stayed last night
For example, the price. I was right about that. I certainly hadn’t imagined it. It was indeed €63:20 for a room that would cost three times that in a hotel in the UK or the USA. I’ll be back here again, that’s for sure.
And then I hit the road. 09:30 and it was already approaching 30°C. This was going to be another long, hot day.
However I didn’t get very far at first. There’s a travel company called Naderers here and as I threaded my way through the maze of streets I came across their transport yard. And parked up at the back of it was this interesting old London Transport Routemaster, whatever that was doing here.
Having made subsequent enquiries, I’m told that it’s RML2473 owned by Sabtours apparently and, rarely, it’s fitted with a Cummins engine instead of an AEC or a Leyland engine.
And behind it were some even more interesting items that look as if they might have been old tramcars from some ancient urban network.
And that wasn’t all of the excitement either.
There was quite a traffic queue for ages, cause by a couple of slow-moving vehicles that took ages to pass, but that was because, as I discovered later, we were stuck in roadworks. I missed my turning and had to do a U-turn, go back and do it all again.
Eventually we were routed off into a diversion and here I came to another halt because parked up on an industrial estate was another old bus.
An Austrian Steyr this time a stage carriage vehicle I reckon and about which I know nothing at all, except to say that it was appropriate to the place, seeing as Steyr had a small factory here in World War II making rifle barrels.
Doing a U-turn in traffic to go back to see it was not easy either. While I was there looking at it I took a photo, but none of my “usual suspects” were able to identify the bus at all.
Eventually we left the diversion and rejoined the main road. My route followed the Danube for a while and then headed off into the hills.
And up there I found a service station selling diesel at just €0:91 – the cheapest that I’ve seen for years – so I fuelled up, only to find one even cheaper a short distance further on, as regular readers of this rubbish will probably have come to expect by now.
But in the main tt was a really depressing drive today in the heat, with roadworks, more diversions, farm vehicles and, at one stage two heavy lorries for about 35 kilometres and nowhere to pass all conspiring to slow me down.
I’d managed to find some bread for lunch, almost coming to grief at a roundabout, but finding a spot in the shade to park up to eat it was something else.
It seemed to me that I must have driven for hours trying to find a quiet shady spot and I was very quickly becoming fed up of all of this. My humour does not improve in the heat.
In the end I found a little clump of trees with a forester’s path going up between them. The path was very tight but I reversed up there all the same as far as I could go until I was totally surrounded by trees and shade.
And here I sat with my butties and a good book and a closing of my eyes for half an hour while the sun moved slowly away and I could resume my drive in something more like comfortable weather.
My way to Eching came through the Airport at Munich – at least I now know where that is – so I parked up and went to find Hans in his shop. I stayed there until closing time and then had my rickshaw ride to the Beer Garden. Salad and chips and alcohol-free beer for tea. After all, this is the suburbs of Munich.
We had an interesting chat with a couple of people about motor bikes and the girl fell in love with Strawberry Moose. But now it’s late and I’m off to bed. It’s a busy day tomorrow.
