Final ride of the Coffeeneur challenge 2019, unless I wanted to go for “8 is great”. Spoiler alert – I wanted to, but it was raining, so I didn’t.
The short story is that I rode back into Corsham on 18th November 2019, and had a really good coffee and vegan apricot flapjack at the Pound Arts Centre Cafe.
5.6 miles ridden, finally felt more confident on the road, although I still made the wrong glove choice. Also – a decision was made, which I will explain in my summing up post …
Back in the UK, my 6th Coffeeneuring ride still had an International feel, as I rode to meet my Canadian friend. (I should point out, obviously I didn’t ride to Canada, she was over visiting her family). We met at “Grounded” in Corsham, which eagle-eyed readers will remember I visited as ride number 3 this year.
We had a lovely chat, and I again treated myself to the vegan dark chocolate brownie. This brownie is so good, as we ordered I said if they didn’t have any we’d go somewhere else and I wasn’t joking.
As we said goodbye, I realised that if I popped in somewhere for another drink, then this ride could still count as a Coffeeneuring trip.
Heading on down the High Street, I parked my bike up and walked back to Previous. This is a lovely little shop, with a tiny cafe upstairs.
I bought a birthday present for a friend and then hopped upstairs for an Almond milk latte. This was very good, and almost kept me warm when I got soaked on my ride back home.
5 miles cycled, 2 hot drinks drunk, 1 lovely catch up, and 1 Coffeeneur drenched on the ride home.
Still in Berlin, I had promised my husband we could go on a “Bowie” tour of Berlin (as he is such an avid fan). We hired Donkey bikes again, and accidentally ended up with the exact same bikes as the day before (they all have names!) Much hilarity was caused when I finally realised my bike had gears – no wonder yesterday’s ride felt like hard work!
Husband had done his research, and expertly piloted us around areas of the city from Bowie’s time of living there in the 1970s with Iggy Pop. Some of these places are mentioned in the lyrics of his later song “Where are we now”, such as Potzdammer Platz and the biggest department store in Europe, KaDeWe. We found the recording studios “Hansa Records” in the pouring rain, which was rather a low point for me (but the opposite for Mr B&T!)
I insisted on an early coffee stop (just to make sure it would be a Coffeeneuring ride – priorities, right?) at a denns biomarkt for an organic coffee and a snack that was marked as Vegan but I’m still not really sure what it was (slightly sweet, flaky pastry ish).
I had been worried about cycling around a city, and an unfamiliar foreign city at that, but I was surprised to find that drivers were very aware of cyclists and no one seemed to mind if you hopped onto the pavement for a short section if it was safer. I just wish such tolerance could be exported back to the UK!
Rather a soggy day, but 8.5 miles ridden around Berlin, a strong coffee with an unidentifiable snack, and one happy husband!
International coffeeneuring this time (or should that be Kaffeneuring?) A short trip to Berlin coupled with husband’s aversion to walking, plus a flat city that is used to cyclists meant that I was easily persuaded to explore on 2 wheels.
We used one of the many, clever apps available these days to hire “donkey” bikes. We chose these mainly because they had a handy holder for a phone on the front handlebars, meaning we could use Google Maps to safely navigate us around the city.
We had (accidentally) managed to arrive in the week before the 30th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down. This meant that the city was full of displays and exhibits and interesting ‘stuff’ to look at. It was maybe a little ironic that as part of the forthcoming celebrations a massive stage blocked the iconic Brandenburg Gate.
Total ride was 11.5 miles, 1 good strong soya latte was drunk (we found the Einstein chain of coffee shops had soya milk), and many tourist sites visited.
