Travel

Nordkapp - Rest day ride…

Today I couldn’t decide, my knees were aching and I ummed and urred due a while before breakfast. Once I had stuffed my face on a really lovely breakkie and part boluses for it I had no choice. Having a rest day in Bremen was cancelled, the road was calling again… But this is a rest day ride, so no pushing things much.

The late start didn’t really help with progress but it did by lunchtime give a plan as searching online where were only places to stay at the 80km mark or the 180+km mark, which with my current useless pace, headwinds, baggage, aches and pains, yada yada a huge list I wasn’t going to go for the bigger option at the moment.

Once out of Bremen the cycle paths deterated into the awful rattling mess such sadly seems to be the norm for much of Germany so far. Or worse some sand and gravel thrown together as a cycle path/hard shoulder. It gets rather sketchy riding in tat like that!

I was beginning to think sod it for the day and maybe setup camp in one of the laybys that seemed quite common. It seemed other campers were using them with the odd campervan, motorhome or caravan in them so the must be alright. Many of these camping vehicles had big ol’ hippy hearts on them so fair enough, nice place for the hippies to camp so no probs for me…I rode through my forth of the day and was still completing using one as a camp site and there was another caravan with a heart, but this time it had a seriously high end Merc next to it… And an arse pressed against the window as the old caravan had a good move on. But I pressed on thinking again and my camping options…

Eventually I found a lovely bit if forest road, which lead to a beautiful little town called Wildeshausen. Lovely dense woods all around, the houses set amongst the trees, it was really nice! The squirrel loved it!

I pressed on, crossing bridges with tank ratings on them (modern bridges) and a quirky picnic area asking people not to feed the board, which sadly I never saw. I did pass a deer farm which was a first, large fenced fields with heards deer either sleeping our grazing. Another interesting thing I noticed was the four languages they pick for signs. German (ok obvious), Russian, Polish and Belgium. No English or French on any of the information signs on many towns or the ones out in the wilds placed by I guess the German version of the Forestry Commission.

As wonderful as finding a place to stay was it has already raised an issue of getting a good start tomorrow in that it’s the first time I’ve seen a place where you can’t check out before 8am… They oddly have no one allowed to escape the encampment early policy it seems. Nice place though so I guess it gives me a good excuse to test the knees and sort my stuff out first.

And this raises another thing, I know everyone’s skint and the like, but come on folks, please throw something at this for the kids. Breaking me and going through hell at the us all well and good, but this is charity: https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-display/showROFundraiserPage?userUrl=t1rides&pageUrl=5