On leaving Premitz, we headed straight back to the river Havel and crossed over onto the Havel-Radweg again. We cruised along this bike path for a large part of the day.

Havel bike path in early morning

Fishermen alongside Havel bike path

The path took us past the site of an old Slavic castle from the 12th century before Rathenow. It was made of wood and earth, so nothing remains to be seen today.

Site of old Slavic castle – nothing remains today

We passed through Rathenow, and then the smaller towns of Gottlin and Grutz. The bike path was easy and there were a fair number of other cycle tourists on it.

We lost a spoke again at about 10am. Kris fixed it really quickly in 20 minutes and we were on our way again.

The spot where we fixed the spoke – notice the beautiful wide tarred cycle path

We temporarily lost the path and toured through this little town unnecessarily – but did enjoy seeing these storks nesting on a church.

Storks on a church
We asked for directions and got back onto the route, which took us through wheat and corn fields.

Finally we reached Havelberg – which was interesting and scenic because part of the town is built on an island in the middle of the Havel river. We had planned to eat something here, but the supermarket was up a hill, so we continued on.

Crossing bridge to Havelberg

The river Havel joins with the river Elbe just after Havelberg. We had a choice of three different bike paths, one on either side of the river and one in the middle. We took the middle one and rode along tracks and stop banks with a river on each side. This was the scenic highlight of the route.

We were getting very hungry and running out of energy by the time we reached Rühstädt, so we stopped to eat some bratwurst with mustard at a Gasthaus. This was a really cute and neat little village with lots of references to storks around the village (including the name of the Gasthaus) and some live storks nesting on roofs. Evidently the town is a “European Stork Village” with an unusually high stork population and storks are honorary citizens.

Stopping in Rühstädt, the stork village for some bratwurst

From here it was not far to Wittenberg and our accommodation. However we had a longish bike road detour (on a dirt track) as they were doing earthworks on the stop bank.

There was no one at our accommodation when we arrived at around 4pm – we were hot and tired and a little grumpy about it. This was the longest ride of our trip – at 110km.
We tracked back to the tourist info and they phoned the accommodation – the people had arrived back so we returned. In the end it was fine and we were able to drink a beer with the proprietor to cool down before showering and washing our clothes.

We walked around Wittenberge in the evening as it began to cool down. There was not much activity in a couple of beer gardens near the river. Wittenberge used to be in East Germany. Today there are a lot of retired people living there, the main tourists are cyclist tourists like ourselves. We ended up just eating a pizza at the local pizzeria.

Sculpture alongside the Elbe – Wittenberge

Rowers on the Elbe at dusk, sculpture in foreground – Wittenberge