Beautiful World – Wednesday 12 June

Beautiful World – Wednesday 12 June

There was loud thunder and a lot of lightning in the middle of the night again – the weather pattern seems to be oppressive heat building up during the day resulting in evening thunderstorms. This no doubt contributed to issues with a burst water pipe at our pension early in the morning. The only real effect on us was that we had to wait for our breakfast bread rolls to arrive around 10 minutes late. I felt quite sorry for our hosts as one of the other guests was a bit disgruntled by it all. None the less, we were managed to be the road by around quarter to 9.

Our ride today was 74 km from Kehnert to Havelberg (and another 5 km around Havelberg in evening). Our morning route took us through small villages all along the Elbe – Sandfurth, Ringfurth, Bittkou, Griebe, Jerchel and Buch. We saw more poppies, wheat fields and big round bales of cut silage in some of the fields.

We met an old man on a bike on the dike around 5km before Tangermunde. He lives nearby and was just having a ride around, enjoying the still cool morning – the wisdom he wanted to share was that the world is a beautiful place.

“the world is a beautiful place”

Tangermunde was a highlight, as it is very picturesque.
The cycle road directly out of Tangermunde is less scenic, as it passes by a semi industrial area.

We then crossed the Elbe to the east side along a long bridge, after which we rode along the dike for around 15 kilometres. The quality of the paths on the dike varied but were mainly good.

We rode past some sheep penned alongside the dike and were surprised to see two huge dogs guarding them. The dogs began to drag the sheep away from us when they thought we were riding too close and looked quite fierce.

Riding on dike alongside the Elbe

We decided to leave the dike and move onto cycle roads across farmland – the roads became very arbitrary with some quite poor (sandy and difficult to ride on). We saw lots of cycle tourists early on, but not on this section. Maybe most of them were on the other side of the river. There are many alterative Elbe cycle ways, as the road we were on was also signposted periodically as “The Elbe Cycle Way”.

It was very hot at this point, and we had finished all our water. So we paused at Sch̦nfeld (a small village) to ask an elderly couple if they could refill our water bottles. They were sitting on the porch of a little house with their dog Рthey say it is cooler in the house but they sit out every day.
From here it was not far to Havelberg – on a cycle road alongside a road with cars – not very exciting but reasonably easy.

We passed through Havelberg shortly after joining the Elbe cycle route in 2017. My memory of that day is that it was also very hot and we did not stop for long because it was so unpleasant outside in the sun. I wonder if this town is always baking at this time of year?

Havelberg is a attractive town, situated on the Havel river, near its confluence with the Elbe. Part of the town is built on an island in the Havel. Our pension is just before the bridge to the island. We were very happy with our pension, as we have a little apartment, with a kitchen, bathroom and comfy sofa. We went into town to buy some groceries. We also bought some new cheap shoes for Kris, as his old shoes are so smelly. It was lovely and cool in the supermarket. Once we left and rode around town, we immediately became overheated again. We found a cool-ish place in a restaurant alongside the river to drink a beer. The service was so poor we restricted it to one and came back to the pension to cool off again.

Havelberg

The weather changed quite rapidly at around 17h00 with lots of thunder and lightening, heavy rain and eventually even hail. We were glad to be indoors, and to feel that maybe it would cool down a bit.

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