Today’s ride marked the final day of four consecutive long rides, giving us a total of 370km. We knew that the stretch from Berlin to Hamburg wasn’t going to be a pushover, excuse the pun, and some of it wasn’t, but it wasn’t as problematic as we expected. Again, made a lot easier by the amazing cycling infrastructure in Germany, and particularly occurs when you least expect it, like in the absolute middle of nowhere.
We were a bit later leaving the hotel because they didn’t serve breakfast until 8am, not that we were in a rush. Ended up riding away just before 9am, pretty well straight onto a good path. Once we got into the rhythm and acquainted ourselves with the names of the little villages on the way, it was a matter of just following the excellent signs all the way to the Hamburg CBD. We noticed that the bike path signage changed from green to red once we crossed from Lower Saxony state into Hamburg, a City-State. Why the colour change? Who knows?
We didn’t have much to stop for on the way, just some lovely old medieval style houses that Greg has taken a shine to, morning tea and lunch.
Our friend the headwind found us about 25km from the destination but we must be getting a little fitter as it didn’t slow us down much.
We arrived at the hotel, Steigenberger in the CBD about 3:15pm, a fashionable 15 minutes after check-in time. After some laundry duties and the normal settling in, we organised dinner. The first thing we noticed about Hamburg is that it all seems a little quieter than most of the big cities we’ve visited thus far. Time will tell.
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