After breakfast at Cao Lai pension, we headed back to the coast where we saw these boats sitting on the mud, as the tide was out.

        

We found the dike and were able to ride along it a little on the see-ward side. There were lots of sheep grazing – they were not at all shy of the bicycles. They were also not shy about leaving their droppings on the road, so we were quite happy to cross over and ride a little while on the other side of the dike.

We then joined the Ems-Jade Canal at Sande. We had a strong head wind and parts of the canal road were very rough, which slowed us down.

      

Eventually the road improved and we stopped to have a snack – bananas and chocolate kisses.

We headed off the canal through country cycle paths to the outskirts of Aurich. Here we decided that we could make it to Emden that day, instead of staying in Aurich. This will enable us to take the ferry to Holland directly from there in the morning.

We rode through the Ihlower forest. There were sign posts pointing to a Kloster Church which we followed but couldn’t find – we just ended up in a muddy field. So we headed back and re-emerged into civilisation. We saw some incredibly neat villages, including Simons Wolde, with red brick houses and manicured gardens.

The last ten km or so of our journey was through lots of open fields with wind farms. There was a steady head wind, hard work for cyclists.

Finally we reached Emden (after 88km mostly against the wind). The town is lovely with a harbour, canals and sailing boats.

 

It also has a special four way lock, called the Kesselschleuse, which connects four canals that all have different water levels, leading via locks into a central basin. It was built in 1885/86 and is the only one in the world.

   

We had a ride along the top of where the old town fortifications were – they have been made into a park circling the town.

We couldn’t find cheap accommodation, so ended up in the youth hostel. This youth hostel was also not cheap, costing the same as most of our hotels. But it was OK and we had a good picnic in the garden that night.