We spent some time and effort during our break to prepare our bicycles for the next part of the tour. We had new chains and cassettes fitted at a bike shop in Geesthacht and bought new back tyres from Decathlon.
The calamity occurred after Kris fitted the new back tyre to his bike and re-adjusted the back brakes. These brakes have a non-standard fitting near the gears and had been giving Kris trouble over the last few weeks. The part that holds the break snapped clean off while Kris was making the adjustments.

We went back to the Geesthacht bike shop first thing the following day. The replacement part he had did not fit. It is not a standard part, so we decided to replace the bicycle instead of spending hours trying to find a replacement. We bought a second hand bike he had at the shop (175 Euro). It is not big enough for Kris so Jenny will ride it. Kris had to spend a number of hours moving bits and pieces between the bicycles (tyres, odometer, panier holders, rear rack, etc etc). Hopefully these two bikes will see us through the rest of our trip.

Andreas is helping us to donate the old bike to someone in the community – potentially refugees again, as with our bikes in 2017. He went to Decathlon and got a replacement part from them (for free!) so it looks as though the bike will be able to be repaired.