Today we rode 73 km from Soest to Hagen, with most of our ride along the Ruhr Valley Cycle Way. It was a cool day, with perfect conditions for cycling.

We started off on small roads and cycle paths, including a climb to ride up along a ridge, before Wickede. We could hear the church bells ringing in the valley down below. The view stretched out for many kilometres on either side. It looked quite industrial in the distance. We managed to keep a good distance from the very urban areas on our ride today. There was a wind farm along the ridge and we stopped at a bench made out of an old wind turbine generator. There was a display showing how much energy was being generated – around 600 kW

We found the RuhrtalRadweg (Ruhr Valley Cycle Way) soon after Frohnhausen and stayed on this route for the rest of our ride to Hagen

There were many other cyclists on this cycle path, most seemingly just out for a day ride on Sunday afternoon. One of them kindly took a photo of us on a bridge over the river.

The Ruhr cycle way was not alongside the river all the way. It occasionally veered away into towns or bits of forest or farmland in the river valley. We even found ourselves on a mountain bike track (maybe we were off the official path) – which ended up at this lovely beer garden above the river. We were only around 10 km from Hagen, so we stopped for a drink. Most of the people in the beer garden had arrived by bicycle.

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Hagen was a disappointment. We rode into the town but it was fairly dreary. So we headed to our accommodation around 3 km out of town near a university. The accommodation is great – large newly fitted out rooms. We thought the university may have an interesting buzz – but evidently it is an on-line university with almost no students on campus.

However there is an excellent beer garden and Argentinian restaurant very near to the hotel, where Esther treated us to a delicious meal