The ride measured 44 km again today. I’m not sure how we managed to achieve the same distance on our odometer three days in a row! We took our time again today. The first part of the ride was a continuation of the Elbe-Lubeck canal.

The canal reached the Elbe itself at Lauenburg. We looked around the town and had some coffee and croissants at a local bakery. It was an old fashioned place with lots of local people meeting up for coffee – we thought Elsbeth would enjoy the scene and resolved to bring her here during our stay.

After Lauenburg, we decided not to cross to the other side of the Elbe but to ride onto the next bridge at Geesthach. We then had to backtrack a bit on the south side of the Elbe to our holiday home in Tespe.

I was very relieved to find that the holiday home will suit us really well, as you can never be sure from online photos and comments. It is in an old family home right behind the stop bank. The elderly lady who runs it was born in the house. She still lives in part of it, and the rest is converted to the holiday home. There is plenty of space for all of us, with two bedrooms, kitchen, TV room and another sitting room. Tespe is a small town alongside the river – there is a small harbour for yachts near our home, but the rest of the town consists mostly of the residential red brick houses typical of the area. It feels fairly affluent. The nearest shops are in the next town a few kilometres away.

We had a reunion party with Silvia and Andreas at our holiday home in the evening. They arrived with crates full of food and drink for us – it was a feast.

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This concludes the first half of our 2019 cycling tour – to be picked up again on 1 July after our break with Elsbeth in Tespe. Here are some travel stats:

• 2,632 km travelled over 42 travelling days
• average 63 km per day
• a further 219 km clocked over 4 non-travelling days or in the evenings (without panniers)
• our bikes have done a total of 2,851 km