Today (my first full day at home) I decided to cycle to Manningtree for some groceries on my 20 mile loop via Wix. As I approached Wix I saw a chap on a touring bike looking at a map with a puzzled expression. I asked if he needed any help and he said he was going to Portsmouth and looking for a good route there. For some reason I thought he was from Denmark and talked to him a fair bit - his English was reasonable. I thought his map was rather unhelpful as it was a very large scale map with only motorways and A-roads but he said similar maps had got him fine through Holland. I asked where he had come from and he said Augsburg. Not Denmark after all!
So we switched to German, which surprised him greatly that this random passer-by woman could speak it, and had a nice chat about cycle touring for about half an hour. I recommended that he went to Danbury (south of Maldon) for his campsite today as he said he likes to do about 60-70km in a day. I started trying to describe the route and in the end offered to cycle with him to Tiptree, which he seemed to think was a top idea.
So off we pootled the 20ish miles from Wix to Tiptree, chatting all the while in German (his facility in English had mysteriously disappeared), and then he bought me a cream tea at the Wilkins & Sons jam factory (and also insisted on paying for a pot of jam I was buying for my husband). All very friendly, he was a very interesting chap who had previously cycled across Australia and the USA and was now cycling to Portsmouth and then getting the Ferry to France and going down the Loire valley, ending up in Bavaria again eventually.
When I set off home again after setting him off on the road to Maldon, it occurred to me that I had probably spoken more German today than in the entire previous 11 days of my tour. Ho hum! I did point out to him that, although this was his first visit to England, he shouldn't assume that any cyclist he randomly bumps into will speak German. How likely was that, after all! And that I had been cycling in his country the week before.
He also, by the way, said my German was 'Perfekt' (they are so polite!) although I could tell the longer we spoke, the worse it got. Perhaps it's a concentration thing but by the end it had turned into some weird form of Denglish, but we were chatting for the best part of 5 hours I suppose!
Anyway, the ride itself was 40ish miles and very enjoyable to ride in company for half of the way. And he, with his fully laden panniers, was slower than me up hills which was a nice change! And no, he didn't have Ortliebs, despite being German. But perhaps being Bavarian is different