What looked like a reasonably straight forward day along the rhine turned out to be rather long taking 8 hours in the saddle.
We were following quiet roads on adjacent cycle paths and after only 12 miles we reached Germany and there was a subtle change where a lot of the paths were block paving rather than road surface and the many towns from Emmerich down to the Ruhr valley were slow progress.
We crossed the Ruhr at Duisberg and struggled to find lunch as every food shop appeared to be a Kebab shop - so we eventually settled on a Garage bought sandwich and sat on the kerb away from the petrol pumps to eat them.
After a very slow ride through Duisberg we passed Dusseldorf Airport and were soon in the City and the next problem. It was a lovely sunny day and as we cycled along the riverfront at the Altstadt there was a huge market / fair going on with tens of thousands of people on the grass banks and the paths - all of which made it virtually impossible to get three bikes laden with panniers through. We eventually picked our way across the city and crossed the Fleher Brucke to the west side of the Rhine, this would give us a much clearer ride down to Cologne than if we had stayed on the east side. As a result we were actually back on roads and the pace soon picked up. WE were on Highway 9 and stopped to get more water for Ian at a petrol station as well as 3 ice creams. We had 12 miles to go and the road was straight and fast and Ian & Rob must have got a sugar rush from the ice cream as I was hanging on at the back for most of the way as they pushed the big gears hard. After nearly 8 hours in the saddle we reached our hotel in Cologne having rode 103 miles and our first 100 miler of the Tour.