Neither of us slept too well in our little camp by the
sportsground – and it had nothing to do with the trains. First of all some little animal was making
funny noises near our tent which captured Pete’s attention and he was up, ears
pricked like a meercat, peering out the netting to see if he could see it (he
couldn’t). I got the traditional “Ju!”,
accompanied by bang, bang on the arm to make sure I too was awake and listening
to this animal. I told him I was going
back to sleep and not to wake me unless the tent was on fire.
The temperature was really cold during the night and I slept
with my sleeping bag zipped up all the way for the first time in a month, with
my light sweatshirt on too and I was still a bit chilly. Pete was too, so we were both awake by 5.15am
and on the road half an hour later.
It was a lovely morning but very cold so we both had
polarfleeces and long pants on. I warned
Pete that today’s directions were not very direct and he was fine with
that. We made a good start as the cycle
track was right next to where we camped.
We found the first village we were after but then couldn’t find the road
to the next one. I should have cracked
open the computer then to check but chose a road that seemed to be going in the
right direction. It took us up a bloody
great hill (which was kind of good ‘cos it warmed us up) and over the motorway
– which was all correct. But then the
lovely smooth surface disappeared and we got gravel. Chose to look at the computer at this point
and found we had turned off too early.
We could see a way out of our predicament by following the gravel road
for a km or so and that is what we did – but on the way we had to cross a
ford. Luckily it wasn’t too deep and we
were able to ride through the water slowly.
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| The church at Rengelrode |
This brought us into the beautiful little town of Rengelrode
– so tidy with lovely old houses and immaculate gardens. Looking for a road out, we found a sign to
Uder, the town with the campground we would like to have found last night –
typical! So we pedalled up this road
which was beautifully smooth and flat and it lead us to the beautiful town of
Uder at 7am, just as the supermarket was opening.
 |
| The beautiful town of Uder |
So whipped in there and got our breakfast
supplies and about 2 km up the road found the perfect place to have our breakfast
– yes another picnic table, covered (so that meant it wasn’t wet from the heavy
dew) beside a small soccer pitch and kid’s playground.
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| Came across this sign just before Witchenhausen which we assume was where the old border was between East and West Germany. |
We continued on this fantastic cycle path, following a
river, straight to Arenshausen which was on our original route – talk about
lucky. We arrived in Arenshausen (which
again was a really lovely village), Sadly we had to veer away from this idyllic
path shortly after this and up a drawn out hill where again we questioned our
directions and whipped out the computer to check. All on track but we now knew which way to
turn at the bottom of said hill for Witchenhausen. Had a minor hiccup at Witchenhausen with a
bike track that turned into flattened grass in a field, before finally finding
the Werratal bike route to Hann Mausen.
This was well-sign-posted, great surface and mostly flat and because of
this we saw more bikepackers this morning than we’ve seen in the past three
days.
Along the way we found yet another football pitch and dried
the sodden flysheet on the goalpost while we had morning tea. We also dried the actual tent and the
groundsheet and Pete got out his washing that he has been trying to dry for the
last two days as well as airing out his sleeping bag and liner. So we had quite the little Chinese laundry
going on and you know kids how happy that makes your Dad. Yes , he was smiling and whistling as he packed
away all the now dry stuff and we set off on a slightly more undulating course
the rest of the way to Hann Munden, but it was still easy and enjoyable. The polarfleeces and long pants had by now
also come off and it was t-shirt and shorts weather.
As we rode into Hann Munden, we noticed there was a sign for
Tourist Info, so we decided to see if we could get some sort of map of this
area instead of cycling blind into Kassel.
So glad we made that decision as this town is AMAZING!!!
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| The view from our tent |
It’s like walking down Diagon Alley (Harry
Potter world for all you non-geeks) and you get picture postcard views from
every direction. It’s like fairyland and
with every new street Pete and I would go “Wow!” I can’t believe how many of these gorgeous
old houses there are. Most of them seem
to be split into apartments now, although you kind of expect them to be some
king of heritage home with nobody living in them.
We had planned to just ride straight to Kassel today but
this town literally stopped us in our tracks – as well as the fact that Kassel
didn’t have a campground. Whereas lovely
little Hann Munden did, and it was half a km away and the supermarket was only
100 metres away. So we went to the
supermarket, checked into the camp, got showered, did some washing and hung
that up before eating a late lunch at 3pm.
Then we went for a wander round this historic town which was mainly
built in the 12th century.
Had a wonderful time snapping photos before returning to camp to write
and upload the blog over a beer. Neither
of us was particularly hungry after our late lunch, so beer and cashews
followed by coffee and a pastry each was it.
We plugged the computer in at the kitchen while we worked
and then hit the hay about 10.30pm, hoping for a better night’s sleep than last
night.
Wow! Looks bloody awesome :)
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