Today’s ride felt long, at 84 km from Bucken to Haldem – it was also flat, so tiring on the arms and hands.

There was no fixed cycle route today. The Bicycle app and Google are unreliable in informing where dedicated bike paths actually exist, so our plan was fluid. We checked out at each turn off to see how things looked on the ground before proceeding. We started out following the L352 road. In one place the app indicated a bike path and we ended up riding with more traffic than was comfortable. In another it indicated no bike path and we found a very adequate tarred bike path separate to the road. After we passed south of Sulingen, we landed up in rural areas with lots of little narrow tarred roads – and quite a pleasant area for cycling.

We rode through many ripe wheat fields, some already harvested. There was quite a lot of rural activity around – tractors on the roads and cows in fields or munching hay in big barns. We saw wind turbines everywhere.

The surprise of the day was finding the Mühlenheider Museum of Wind Power, about 10 km from our final destination. We had some coffee and cake (for a donation – it is very low key and there is no real cafe) and had a good look at the historical wind turbine collection (from the 1980’s and 1990’s). Here is their web site:

http://www.muehlenheider-windkraftmuseum.de/English-Site/

Nineteen percent of German power is generated by wind with over 26,000 wind turbines.

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We struck it lucky with our accommodation today. It is a room with shared bathroom and access to a kitchen and living area. Except there are no other guests, so essentially we have the apartment to ourselves with a kitchen, dining room, living room and balcony. There is nothing much to see in the town – only a small shop where we bought food for our evening meal.