Today we only did 40 km, from Klingenthal to Lengenfeld. We have given up following the Czech/German border as the terrain in that direction seems to be getting too mountainous and it is slow going. So we are heading more north, to ensure we can reach Hamburg on schedule.

Although it was short, our ride was not all easy going. We struggled to find good bicycle paths the whole day. We found ourselves sharing the road with cars more often than not, in sharp contrast to the previous day. Thankfully the weather remains reasonably cool.

The first mishap occurred when we missed our turnoff at Zwota to Oberzwota and found ourselves on a long hill climb with reasonably fast moving cars coming past at regular intervals (and not much shoulder to the road). We pushed our bikes up the steeper sections instead of riding really slowly, feeling that it was safer with the traffic. This route was more direct and shaved a few km off our total intended journey. We took the opportunity to turn off from this road near the top, at the small settlement of Kottenheide. Kris could see some minor roads through the woods on his app, so we decided to use these to cut through to a bike path below. The first part of the road was very good. Then we turned off onto another side road and it steadily deteriorated, but we didn’t want to turn back because we have already traversed part of it. This was once a forestry road, but had obviously not been used for some time. There was a small stream running down the centre so we got all muddy, there was long wet grass and patches of nettles (very unpleasant), and then there were also a number of trees that had dropped across the path. I wouldn’t have gotten my bike through without help from Kris. He pulled some of the trees out of the way and lifted the bicycles over one of them. At one point the water/nettles situation was so bad that Kris took the bikes over a little ditch to the side of the path. It eased up after a couple of hundred meters and we were quite elated when we joined back onto a real bike path. This took us into Schöneck, the biggest ski resort in East Germany and the highest located town in the district (at 700m).

From here we travelled to Falkenstein, again finding that the bike routes indicated on the phone app were usually not on very quiet roads. We stopped here for an ice cream from the supermarket (1/2 litre of Belgium chocolate ice cream with huge choc lumps).

After Falkenstein, we got separated (Jenny didn’t see Kris turn off onto a side road), and Jenny continued on the busy road to Ellefeld, where she stopped to send a sms text and wait for Kris. We reconnected and continued on the busy road to Auerbach. From here we did find some quieter roads, through Rodewisch.

We had a funny incident at one point (near Rodewisch) where the bicycle route we were following on the app had to cross a small stream. We found a construction site at the crossing, where they were building a new bridge. Standing at the edge of the site, we were happy to see a small temporary wooden bridge over the stream. How thoughtful we said, as we set off to cross it – pushing the bikes down and up steep banks on either side. When we got to the reconnecting road on the other side, we found that it had been fenced off as a construction site – so we couldn’t get out! Kris was just starting to unbolt part of the fence (taking his bike tools out) when a man (who was silently observing us up till then), started yelling and waving at us from the other side of the bank to come back. We decided not to push our luck, so we turned around. At the bottom we spotted another crossing – a little weir, which was not too deep. We quickly rode through the water and found our way back to the road.

The bicycle route followed the railway track for a while out of Rodewisch. This was fine for a while but eventually disappeared into a large neatly mowed field (which was actually fine to ride on). Soon after this we gave up on supposed bike tracks, and did the last few kilometres into Lengenfeld on the road (which was not too busy).

Lengenfeld is a small neat town and our hotel is right on the central square – so we just cruised right up to it. It is a huge hotel and we are in an economy room right on a top floor – the lift went up to the floor below, with a little route to get to the top floor.
After cleaning up and doing the next day’s route planning, we went and had a beer at the hotel bar, before wandering around the square. Our eating options were an ice cream place, a kebab shop, a bakery and a pizza restaurant. A few people had bought ice creams and were sitting eating them around the fountains in the middle of the square. We decided to eat at the pizza restaurant – it was very pleasant sitting at an outside table and the calzone (folded) pizzas were good.