Grand Tour of Europe.

Friday 30^th July.

Simple breakfast at the hotel in a pleasant, clean dining room. I drove from Lille for 3 ½ hours to Blankenberg where we stopped for lunch. We halted at an old village (Villach?) and took photos before eventually reaching Cocham where we drove into the cobbled town square and the tourist board booked us rooms in the Hotel Hamm (HH) so my bedding has my initials on it. Photo Cocham Castle So far there have not been coffee-making facilities in the room (and as we progressed we were to discover this was the norm not one continental hotel room provided any form of drinks facilities except for a few which supplied a mini bar, but we didn't use these.) We walked out for dinner but there didn't seem to be much available although we caught a bus to Old Cocham. Eventually found the Einstein Restaurant among littlestreets of the old town, which had been recommended by our hotel and which looked reasonably serviced and priced. We ate a good meal (I had red snapper.) After dining well we walked towards the river. lain discovered that "cocham" means "confluence" and it is here that the Rhine and Mosel meet.

We stopped to speak to two motorcyclists to ask the way to the River Rhine. They were Raphael (l7yrs) and Smurf (34yrs), both in black leathers, both guitarists (Raphael was carrying his guitar; Smurf is his teacher.) Once they learned we were English Raphael opened the verbal floodgates and dominated our conversation all the way down to the river practising his English while lain talked to Smurf, then when we had seen the river confluence (it was dark, but partially lit and still visible) went for a beer in a beer garden I had visited with Joyce some years ago and Raphael repeated his sad tale about his newly departed girlfriend to lain while Smurf told me about his girlfriend and their little girl whom he loves and is no longer allowed to see. Everyone smoked except for me and I found it was affecting my throat despite being outdoors. Smurf's telephone number is 026 1-38583 and Raphael frtohr's mobile number is 0160-3831394 and home; 0261-25755. Despite Raphael and Smut-f's joint problems we had an interesting evening and exchanged addresses before returning to the Hotel Hann by bus. Slept poorly for most of the night; mostly due to snoring.