I Would Walk 1000 Miles

Apologies for the delays and missing posts. As you can see, things look different here and that’s a major reason for the slackness. I didn’t want to add new posts in mid-conversion to a new system. Hence when I did get the time to get on a PC, I was working on this and answering all your emails!

Oh, and if you’ve come here because your feed is broken that’s due to the way Wordpress works. And because of how I have it configured (i.e. all by the people who host my webspace) I can’t change that. Hence I couldn’t “replace” or swap the feeds. Please re-subscribe to the new one. Sorry - I know how to fix it, I just can’t with the permissions I have.

So where was I? Ah, yes. Liege. A lovely old city with some of the best hosts yet. Thank you tremendously Sonia, Jacqueline, Clara and Abo as well as the other people I met in passing. I had a great time and I very much hope to come back soon.

After that I passed through Roetgen and stayed with Manfred and his lovely family. I was their first surfer and can’t recommend them highly enough. His wife cooks a cracking curry, the kids are a shining example and their dog is just lovely. Manfred even bought the beers as Germany beat Romania in a friendly! In addition he rang some relatives in Gelsenkirchen and told them when to expect me, thus solving my accommodation problems there as well. What a guy!

Roetgen is right on the Belgian / German border but there are absolutely no “Welcome To…” signs which is a shame as I really wanted a picture with one. The area round there is beautiful, though, if you like forests. A very pleasant walk.

From there across the hills and downs to Bonn where I was supposed to stay with Elisa, but ended up crashing with Christoph as my “welcome to Bonn” night on went on rather longer than anticipated! I met a great group of people, partly Couchsurfers / partly visiting American students. The beer was good, but served in glasses that are too small for an Englishman, and I got to meet up with some of then again in Cologne a couple of nights later.

There I stayed with Ira who gave me the keys and didn’t mind if I got back stupidly late. Which is good as I returned from partying at 6am… Also in Cologne I went to a very posh spa / sauna place, the Claudius Therme. Ulf was a great host there as he goes regularly and he showed Heydi and I around everything. We got special discount overnight tickets and made the most of several different traditional saunas, the bathing areas and - as a treat from Ulf - were covered head to toe in quality chocolate before sweating it all off! Bizarre, but it really does make your skin feel good afterwards. And no, no photos - sorry!

From Cologne up the side of the Rhine to Dusseldorf where I spent a couple of nights with Chris ( and ended stage 6). Another great host who first drove me then walked me around parts of the city. Then tried to poison me with chili schnapps in a very old-fashioned boozer. I even got to catch most of the Newcastle match on the Monday night. Of course, we lost. Grr.

And finally up to Essen where I’m sat writing this on one of Yorn’s many spare PCs. I can’t upload any YouTube videos as there’s no editing software on here which is a shame as I have a couple to post. I guess you’ll all just have to wait! I have around 7-8 more hosts to visit as I make my way to Amsterdam, so I could be in luck with one of them.

So there you go. Up to date. Tomorrow I make my way to Gelsenkirchen where I will stay with Manfred’s relatives. I hope to visit the football stadium there and a couchsurfer has agreed to meet me to watch the match in a bar. All the tickets are gone unless I fancy paying eBay prices! Now I’m off to update the Tour Blog with some more details and hopefully a handful of pictures.