When you are used to sleeping in a tent (and a leaky one at
that), to be offered the chance to sleep on a concrete floor in a covered-in
area by the bar on a rainy night, is like a holiday. All that room, everything dry, no worries
about leaks…….and two power points to boot which came in very handy as there
hasn’t been a lot of sunshine for the solar charger. No wind to disturb our little gas cooker in
it’s work and even an electric light – not that we really needed it as we’re
well ready for bed by the time darkness falls around ten thirty.
So we had a great sleep until 6.45am and without a tent to
dismantle we were on the road by 7.15am.
We were well wrapped up this morning in cycling longs, polarfleeces and
jackets as we cycled down into the town of Ahnatal. Found a supermarket and got our breakfast
supplies before setting off along the main road to Furstenwald. That was quite busy so we were glad to turn
off onto quieter roads for the rest of the morning at the village of Ehrsten.
We were on the lookout for a sheltered spot to eat but we didn’t find anywhere
until 15km of undulating road had passed under our tyres. The good old Sportzplatz at Obermeiser came
to the rescue and we were able to sit down in the morning sun, out of the cold
wind and have a delightful breakfast.
We needed the fuel as the terrain was challenging for our
tired legs, especially when coupled with the strong and persistent headwind
that has dogged us for four days now. At
Grimelsheim, as per my directions, we ended up on a farm track, heading for the
river. I held my breath hoping this
track was going to have a good surface as we sure didn’t want to cycle back up
that hill if it was rubbish.
But to our great relief it was a lovely track – good seal
and well sign-posted and took us the last 8 km to Warburg with ease. It was flat and with the trees that lined the
path and being in the valley, there was virtually no wind – beautiful!
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| Warburg, Germany |
We managed to miss all the traffic and skirt round Warburg
just as planned and enjoyed a reprieve from the hills and the wind with a
lovely tree-lined cycle path along the river Diemel. But when we did finally emerge back on the
road, we discovered the river Diemel was now the river Twiste and we had veered
too far south so now had to go on the busy road back towards Warburg for 3km
before turning off into the village of Germete.
Here we found a board showing different cycling circuits in the region
and one of them (R1) was going in the direction we wanted. So we thought, “well, that makes it easy” and
set off on a flat, smooth cycle path following the signs for R1.
We’d only gone about a km when they decided to abandon the
flat and take us over a steep little hill – so steep we had to push our bikes
up the last half of it. Hot and sweaty,
we coasted down the other side to join up with the much gentler climb out of
Germete and were already annoyed with this R1 path we had chosen. We were then pointed down between two
cornfields which seemed to take us on a bit of a tiki tour rather than directly
north-west as we wanted. So we thought “Stuff
this, we’ll get back on the road” and took a farm track towards the road. Only trouble was, when we were nearly at the
road, a giant culvert with a muddy stream at the bottom revealed itself to
us. So we had no choice but to pedal
back to R1 and keep following it. As it
turned out, it improved from here, but once again our faith in the bike routes
was sorely tested.
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| Nice house in Scherfede |
We reached the town of Scherfede where we bought supplies at
the supermarket before having to make the decision between fairly busy main
road with good surface and great signage, or take the bike route through what
appeared to be a very unpopulated area with few villages and many tracks, which
meant a huge potential for getting lost……we chose the road. This started off badly with a massive climb
of about 4km out of Scherfede.
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| Church in Kleinenhaus |
Hard,
hard work on tired legs and was undulating the entire 15km to the next major
town of Leichtenau. By the time we got
there we were sick of hills and wind and traffic. So we were ready to give the bike routes a
try again so veered off to the town of Husen, 8km away. Started off with about 3km of downhill which
is fun while it lasts, but also a little worrying as you wonder if the next
uphill is coming soon. But no, we got
diverted to a cycle track, which then turned into a gravel track and we were
really worried that we had made the wrong decision and should have stuck to the
main road. However, we soon got a quiet
tarsealed road that led us through the valley alongside a river and it was
paradise! Quaint villages dotted our
journey through this lush valley and the signposts were plentiful.
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| We were glad to leave the windfarms up on the top of the hills and get to the shelter of the valley. |
We were aiming for an area with lots of lakes as we felt
sure there would be a few campgrounds in the area. We hoped it wouldn’t take too long to find
one as by now we had done over 100km and were getting pretty tired. We saw a sign which we thought said something
about camping so went up this back road to investigate. But it just led to a myriad of bike
paths. We saw a cyclist approaching so
Pete stopped him to ask him if there was a camp nearby. We got talking and his name was Daniel and
after he
explained where the camp was (7km back from where we’d just come), he
suggested we could come and pitch the tent at his place. We took no time in accepting this offer and
followed him on his bike through a maze of gravel tracks to his place about 7
km away, but not backtracking.
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| All the flags are flying ready for Germany's game against France tomorrow night |
He lived in the village of Ostenwald and went in first to
let his wife know he had brought two tired strangers to their house. Ellen very graciously said “No problem” and
after we pitched the tent, we both enjoyed a delicious hot shower with nobody
wanting any tokens for an extra two minutes of hot water. To cap it off, they had some leftover dinner
and asked if we wanted it – well we weren’t going to turn that down! Not only a delicious dinner of some kind of
wonderful home-made vegetable stew, but a wine for me (aah, wine! Can’t remember the last time I had one!), and
a beer for Pete. We met their two lovely
children Rosa, 9 and Gustas, 6, who were very excited to meet people from the
other side of the world. Eventually they
settled down and went to bed and we shared more wine and beer and stories with
Ellen and Daniel. Lovely and generous
people, we were very glad they spoke English and extremely happy we had stopped
Daniel to ask for directions. It would
have been easy to keep chatting, but both of them had work in the morning so we
called it quits at 11.30pm feeling clean, well fed and happily tired.
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