Whatever unkind things we may say against the Germans in general, we have to thank them for fine cycling roads. That, as a matter of fact, they are military ways, signifies nothing. ' They are straighter than any Roman road ever was; they are in excellent repair; you travel for a hundred miles at a stretch with delightfully shaded trees on either side, and, were it not for the blistering heat and the choking, throat-parching volumes of dust, riding would he almost as pleasant as the morning spin in Battersea Park. As yet we have had The Knocking over of a stupid peasant, nothing in the way of thrilling experiences. the runing down of a yelping dog, sudden ignominious lurch into a cornfield when riding too near the edge of the path, can hardly come under the definition of "thrilling." OurentranceintoGermany, how ever, did provide a mild excitement. We had been resting for an hour or so at Maastrich in Holland, and then we set off for a rapid Tun over the frontier to Aix-la-Chapelle. One of us, Fraser, happened to be making the'pace, and while jogging through a much cobbled hamlet got some distance ahead. He turned down a lane, but after travelling five minutes or so realised he was not being followed, and it dawned upon him he might be on the wrong track. So he retraced his way to the village. He could hear nothing of the other two of us, Lunn or Lowe. Presuming they had pushed along the high: road, he sprinted as he had never sprinted in his life before. Darkness came on, and he rather apprehended difficulty in crossing the frontier that night at all. But as he had no Jamp, the darkness was a blessing in disguise. A suggestive bullet might have been sent after him, But he whizzed past the Dutch and the German custom houses unnoticed, and never left the saddle till in Aix itself. Every hotel was asked over the telephone whether two Englishmen had arrived. "No." The next morning the police were consulted. They knew nothing. So Fraser rode back to the frontier. Had any English cyclist in brown suit and helmet passed? No; the officials were positive no cyclist had passed without their knowledge! A fecling of anxiety overtook the inquirer. Had Lunn and Lowe suffered an accident? And then a fortunate impulse guided his steps in the direction of a little Dutch hostelry, where he found the other two of us couifortably at breakfast, having been assured no cyclist had travelled across the frontier the previous evening. Therefore, thinking they were ahead, Lunn and Lowe put up at the village of Vaals for the night, and were duly surprised to learn that the third of our little trio had been sleeping on the other side of the frontier.
We rested a day at Aix-la-Chapelle, drank the regulation quantity of sulphur-Taden water, and had the regulation sulphuric bath which we said did us good, but inwardly felt we would been better without, The ride from Aix to Cologne was enjoyable. It could hardly have been. otherwise. The whole countryside was bathed in glowing sunshine. © Weather-tanned men and women were in the field reaping the full-eared corn. In the heat of the day we came across picturesque family groups resting under the trees, and as we ran by they greeted us with a bright AN hell! These country people, broad-shouldered and sunburnt, always displayed an inquisitive good feeling towards us. But we ever found them a simple and devout folk. At jthe corner of every lane, and on the edge of many a field, they have built little shrines, primitiveinconstruction, but full of beautiful suggestion. Sometimes the shrine is but a rude brick structure, with a highly-coloured lithograph print behind a wire screen, and surrounded with a posy of artificial flowers. At other times itis a gorgeously-bedizened crucifix, with the paint laid heavily on. Often, indeed, it is nothing but a clumsily-chiselled cross stuck unevenly in the: ground. But, gorgeous or severe, the same religious feeling erected all, and we were each impressed with the modest sanctity of these poor labourers' ives.
The villages through which we hurried lacked much of the charm associated with rural England. There were no gardens wafting the scent of summer roses. All the houses abutted direct on the roughly-paved street, and every other house was a bier-halle." Snarling dogs dozed in the warmth, and as we came along began to yelp and jumped at our legs with evil intent. Now and then we managed to give one a violent kick, and then it would sneak away, tail-down. The dogs are a constant nuisance throughout Germany. German cyclists usually carry a long swish, but whether a swish is any good for keeping a brute from under your front, wheel we have had no practical experience.
A heavy-moustache and lager-blown constable stopped us as we treadled into Cologne. We had no official number on our machines, and had therefore to walls through the' town to our hotel. Our.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.