Woke up to rain showers and a very dull start to the day.
Nevertheless, time to be moving on and getting on the road to the Rhine.
Although we normally steer well clear of motorways, this is a trip through
Germany so rather than wandering around the minor roads we joined the A16
heading for Belgium then followed the international route E40 – which is how
motorways are numbered in Belgium anyway. We maintained a steady pace, just a
little faster than the trucks because we've found that is our most economical
speed.
Unfortunately the weather refused to play ball and we spent most
of the day dodging showers as well as lots of traffic – it seemed very busy,
especially the Brussels ring road. The upgrading of the A4 from Aachen to Koln
in Germany appears to be almost complete and also seems to be a completely new
road for a large part as the satnav and Autoroute showed us driving through
fields and forests! This does mean, however, that it is now somewhat faster,
and there being no speed limit on this three-lane highway a lot of “locals”
were seeing how quickly their fast cars could go……………..!
Late afternoon we pulled onto a restplatz to work out our
stop for the night. We had targeted the Koblenz area but it had been a long driving
day with just short comfort and lunch breaks so when we discovered we had
stopped only 3 km from a free stellplatz the decision was made. Rheinbach
turned out to be the car-park of a sports centre with four dedicated motor-home
overnighting places. There doesn't appear to be any of the usual “facilities”
but as we’re fully self-contained we're not bothered.
Although the rain had stopped when we crossed into Germany
(from Holland – there’s a short-cut) once we had parked up it started raining
again, but only lasted an hour and as I write the sky is clearing. Hopefully
we’ll have a better day tomorrow when we join our first objective, the
Romantischestrasse.
No comments:
Post a Comment