Cologne

After a good day of riding and another night at the same stopping place it was time to carry on. My aim for the night was Cologne - it would be my last big stop before the (still unbooked) ferry.

The drive was slow going, roadworks, traffic and the tricky part of not having enough power to overtake lorries on the dual carriageway motorways when you’ve got cars screaming past at 90mph, so I just plodded along. I stopped for a shower and a lunch break at a services, bit the bullet and booked a ferry home, and put in a drop of extortionately priced fuel as I hadn’t seen anywhere to top up at before I’d got onto the motorway, and eventually made it to the outskirts of Cologne.

Cologne has an Umwelt zone, a low emission dirty diesels unwelcome zone. An exception is made if you go straight to the Wohnmobilplatz (campervan park up) via a specific route and straight out again. I’m not sure how they police the zone but I had exact instructions of which route was allowed and I would be following it. I came to the motorway exit I needed – closed. I went past it and looked to see whether it was open in the other direction – also closed. After 5hrs of driving this isn’t what I particularly needed. I took the next junction and pulled in as soon as I could, it happened to be a Lidl car park so I went and got some food before deciding what to do. I’ve learnt a lot about calculated risks this year and I decided I’d just follow the route the satnav wanted to take me on and hope I didn’t get caught. Anyway, I think it was a justified reason to be deviating from the route (clearly my German language skills meant I'd be able explain this if needed)

With some slightly hairy driving through Cologne I made it to the Wohnmobilplaz. Even if you have a green light pedestrians have right of way, as do bikes and so do trams. Add in driving on the right, unfamiliar junctions and trying to look out for turnings when it’s starting to get dark, I find driving in cities here takes a huge amount of concentration.

I’d arrived later than planned and it didn’t wholly surprise me to find the wohnmobilplaz was full. The book said it had 60 places and it was the only one in the city. On a Saturday night with the campervan obsessed Germans that's probably not enough space. There was a car park by the entrance to it which had a no campervans sign, but there were a couple of vans parked up there. I took another calculated risk and decided I’d spend the night in the car park. A few more vans arrived to find the same problem as me and also parked up, with safety in numbers I stealth cooked my dinner and went to bed.

I woke up to noise outside, I looked at my clock – 0453. Are these people heading home or heading into the city at this time of night? Then I could hear an engine running behind my van, I could see flashing lights so I got up and looked out the window. There was a police van and two police cars! A bit extreme just for people who have overflowed from the wohnmobilplatz I thought. Then I looked out the other window, 3 fire engines. Phew, probably not campervan related then. After a while, not before my bike rack had been walked into a couple of times which always makes me jump a mile, they packed up and left and I went back to sleep, glad of the extra hour in bed.

Things like this would have used to have bothered me but I’ve realised it’s just part of the adventure and find it annoying rather than anything to get too worried about. Having a day of wandering and riding round Cologne was worth it, so much so that me and Bertha are flouting the rules again tonight and staying put, hoping for no more dramas.