Travel

Nordkapp - You are staying where?!

So today was an odd one. The goal was still Hamburg but I took a huge chunk out of it yesterday even with the winds, so it meant a relatively easy day ahead of only 88km. The wind was meant to have died down also and wasn’t due to return until the afternoon so good progress should be possible.

Most of the ride other then 3km of it was all on cycle path so also nice. Overall ticked through the day quite nicely until just before lunchtime when my chain came off. It gave me another excuse to spend a bit of the cleaning everything again and removing some grass such had got wrapped around one of the pulley wheels. So all fixed and changing smoothly again.

I got covered in bugs of one kind or another today. Ants everywhere on the wheels and panniers, spiders hiding under my phone, then the Garmin, then hanging off my bars. Greenfly everywhere. Off black things stuck to my suntan lotion. It was a very critter fest day.

Hamburg is my first major city since Copenhagen and it’s incredibly different. From a bike path perspective they were knackered, the Roubaix cobbles are smoother than the 16km into Hamburg in the bike paths. Then there is the navigation etiquette which is very similar to that of Paris’, much more chaos and craziness and bleating of horns and shouting and gesturing at people. Didn’t I say Germany was much more like Britain yesterday?! Seems driver behaviour is a lot more like it as well.

When I booked a place to stay after lunch I searched Expedia for basically the cheapest hotel in the middle of Hamburg, and finding one half the price I thought great, one room left, sorted. Upon reaching the street I was lost, we are talking sex shops, strip shows, bar after bar and restaurants galore, gun shops, loads of goths, punks, bands playing on the streets. And no sign of the hotel. The good thing about not speaking a word of German is it’s easy to get rid of all the beggers, such sadly there was a lot of.

Eventually I find the hotel… Well a door actually leading up to it… This made for some fun with Lancet and all my bags. I’m on the 5th floor to, lots of fun! The guy at reception was someone dismayed to have a cyclist booking in, even more stunned when I explained I wanted to escape early also… It seems most the drunks staying here don’t act this way. He offered to put Lancet in a downstairs store room which was great, although when I returned from dinner a couple of hours later his boss had gone nuts and wanted Lancet shifted. He wondered what I would do, “I’m taking my bike to my room”…some Hope Pro 4’s waking up a hotel tomorrow morning, this could be fun! 😁

So tomorrow, early morning I hope to get to the Rathaus, then off down the Elba for a bit before a ferry crossing and heading on towards Bremen. Should be about fun day hopefully.