More bucolic cycling – this time to spend the night in the Netherlands. A street in Dinxperlo is bisected by the Dutch-German border. I don’t think it is a town with anything else of interest. Except maybe for a wildlife park next to where we are staying: I can look forward to a night disturbed by peacock calls and cockcrows.
I thought I’d factored in religious festivals – days when shops close and even open cafés can be hard to find. I knew we were safe from Himmelfahrt and Pfingsten this holiday, but Corpus Christi (Fronleichman) caught me out today in this Roman Catholic part of Germany.
Not that it mattered. It was a repeat ride from last year with no other surprises, and there were enough cafés open for two coffee stops.
Oh, and I think I’ve discovered that roadside wind turbines interfere with the working of cycle computers. So that’s 200m to add to today’s tally.
Looking out of the hotel window this morning, we noticed a discreet needle exchange point opposite the church – which explained the mix of people in the little square and perhaps some of the noise at night.
Squalls of heavy rain today interspersed with warm sunshine, so we came to Coesfeld on as short a route as I could navigate. Thanks to a handy rural bus shelter, we hardly got wet at all. It was quite a hilly route in comparison to what we have done so far, and it felt good to look out over undulating countryside as we gained height.
Even just 12 miles out of Münster we were in a different land. It wasn’t just that it was agricultural, with farms the size of small complexes, but that the political placards were for right-wing parties again and some of the farms had “no farmers, no food, no future” slogans. Welcome to the secular Kulturkampf.
Another pleasant ride in Goldilocks weather. The nicest part was cycling along the River Werse towards Münster.
Münster itself is very civilised. And, after a week of small towns and gutbürgerliche hotels, so young! (There’s a university.) It’s known as a green, liberal city – implicit in its transport policies (bicycles and bendy busses everywhere) and the absence of AfD posters for the forthcoming EU elections. “Münster: aiming for a better world since the Anabaptist rebellion.” It was badly bombed and rebuilt, so the centre is obviously new but harks back to its medieval past.
Staying in a city is a bit of a shock after so many nights with only the sound of birds to disturb the silence. We are staying in a small central square beside a church and it was fairly noisy (but only with people rather than traffic); I felt rather mean when my wish for rain was granted and everyone got up from the outdoor tables and hurried inside.
A pleasant, largely rural ride on roads that we have cycled before. We came across the prisoner of war graveyard of Hausdülmen again and stopped. So many Russian dead, captured fighting for a country and emperor that soon ceased to exist. Lying in a corner of north-west Germany because their new country didn’t want them back. The rows of stone markers seemed, for one gruesome moment, to resemble molehills or – even worse – slightly raised manhole covers.
Coffee in Lüdinghausen (no photos this time) and on the way out we noticed the painted trunks of the trees beside the cycle path. A Baumschützprojekt – but I haven’t yet found what the trees are being protected from. Some even had a few strands of ivy tied round the trunks as if trying to propagate it.
As for the rest of the ride – it was enjoyable and included another castle that I didn’t remember from previous holidays. Nothing special – just agricultural land and some nice cornflowers. The weather was perfect for a little bit of exertion.
An explosion of countercultural output following the death of Franco in 1975 and decades of repression. The collective id escaped its box, and forbidden feelings spilled out into all forms of culture. There wasn’t much of a Spanish film industry before this – perhaps it was seen as a chink through which ideas could enter Franco’s Spain.
I don’t like Pedro Almodóvar’s films. I was totally alienated by the last one I saw years ago – a rape scene played for laughs – but, given the context, his films make some kind of sense. You could rage against the Catholic Church and patriarchy or you could poke cartoonish, bad-taste fun at it.
We saw clips from Dark Habits (1983) and What Have I Done To Deserve This? (1984). Nuns shooting up and a taxi driver claiming proudly to have forged letters from Hitler. As I said, bad taste. Also non-judgemental and sympathetic – qualities perhaps lacking in the Spain Almodóvar grew up in. But still . . . no.
The other film was Jamon Jamon (1992) by Bigas Luna (Life of Brian immediately sprang to mind), which looked like an extended advert or pop video with its great images.
As an aside, it was amusing to think of doing this lesson over Zoom about Spanish films, speaking English and sitting in a Dutch hotel room.
We’ve been this way before, but it is still pleasant, particularly since we finally had a properly sunny day. A few changes: we crossed the Rhine on the road bridge into Wesel. As last year, we picked up the cycle path beside the main road for several miles until we ditched it in favour of a disused railway line popular with Sunday cyclists.
Then a turning that looked vaguely familiar but I decided I must be mistaken for shortly afterwards we came across a small group of water buffalo – definitely not something I would have forgotten! But no, I was right – I realised we had been this way before when I saw the logs where we had stopped for a break last September. (Honestly! The inconsequential things that memories are made of.) The water buffalo must be a recent addition.
Old Shoe Box 