The rain had stopped by the time I woke up and the sun was shining! I had breakfast at the hotel, then left quickly after that. ibis Budget hotels aren’t places to hang around in – they’re just useful overnight stops.<\/strong><\/p>\n Before leaving Germany, I drove for an hour (further away from the border) back to Br\u00fchl, to visit the bits I missed there on Sunday. Last weekend, I only saw the Falkenlust Hunting Lodge, but I didn’t get as far as the Augustusburg Palace and its gardens.<\/p>\n I parked back by Falkenlust and walked to Augustusburg (about 2,5km), through the gardens. Entry was only with a guided tour – which I did. The guided tour was all in German – I chose not to take an audio guide which would translate in to English – but I understood for the most part which part of the castle we were in.<\/p>\n The tour took just over an hour and we went in to some very grand looking rooms, and some with excellent views over the castle gardens.<\/p>\n When we got back to the starting point I went for a walk around the gardens for a bit, before deciding it was after 1pm and I really needed to make a move. I had a 4 hour drive to Ypres ahead of me.<\/p>\n The next bit of driving would be my last Autobahn stretch before leaving Germany. Just West of Aachen I pulled off the Autobahn and turned South to reach the Dreil\u00e4ndereck – on the outskirts of both the German city of Aachen, and the Dutch townb of Vaals. It is the point where the borders of Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands all meet – and it is a bit of a tourist attraction with a viewing tower, the flags marking the border, the highest point in the Netherlands just a few metres away, and many caf\u00e9s nearby.<\/p>\n From the tri-border point I returned to the car and it was then a further 2 hours 45 minutes to Ypres. It was a fairly clear run and I did it with just one stop of just under 5 minutes, shortly before joining the Brussels Ring: The Belgian version of the M25.<\/p>\n Arriving in Ypres at 18:20, I checked in to my room and walked in to town in time to see the Last Post ceremony at 8pm. After the ceremony, I went to find somewhere to eat and I enjoyed a very tasty Flemish Beef Stew, before returning to the B&B to get some rest.<\/p>\n On Sunday I’ll be returning to the UK. I’ve not driven on the left in over a week, and the 70mph limit on UK motorways will feel incredibly slow compared to the speeds I was doing on the German Autobahns!<\/p>\n My Channel Tunnel crossing is not until late afternoon, so I’ve got plenty of time to have a wander and do not much at all before I leave Ypres after lunch.<\/p>\n I’ll see you later, Britain. (Please let the weather be good).<\/p>\n FH.<\/p>\n Today’s Mileage:<\/strong> 272 Miles Before leaving Germany, I drove for an hour (further away from the border) back to Br\u00fchl, to visit the bits I missed there on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[23,54,53,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bruehl","category-trois-frontieres","category-vaals","category-ypres"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.fred-hart.de\/rheinland2017\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2017\/05\/DSCN2604.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fred-hart.de\/rheinland2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fred-hart.de\/rheinland2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fred-hart.de\/rheinland2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fred-hart.de\/rheinland2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fred-hart.de\/rheinland2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.fred-hart.de\/rheinland2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292,"href":"http:\/\/www.fred-hart.de\/rheinland2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions\/292"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fred-hart.de\/rheinland2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fred-hart.de\/rheinland2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fred-hart.de\/rheinland2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fred-hart.de\/rheinland2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAccumulative Mileage:<\/strong> 1516.2 Miles<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"