Day 9 : Introducing hills

Awake! To no rain. Sadly though, whilst I pitched my tent so as to maximise the potential of the sun to dry the tent out in the morning, the sun was stuck behind the clouds.

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Drying the tent

The tent was given a wipe down and I was on my way.

I had to get back onto the cycle route, but didn’t fancy back-tracking 23 km, so instead chose a point where I could join it and headed there.

My Garmin GPS satnav is by turns indispensable and frustrating. Within 5 minutes of leaving the campsite it tried to take me across someone’s land where they had erected a sign saying access was verboten.

Then 15 minutes later it took me on a detour up a very rough and steep track. The back wheel was frequently spinning round trying to get traction, and I was very pleased I had fitted a small chainring in order to get up the hill at all.

Soon after it took me up a big hill for an unexpected sightseeing trip to a castle. I’m glad I did some Swain’s Lane training back in London as some of these slopes were equally steep, if not more so. The descents were also a good exercise in bike control, and a bit of a work out for the brake pads.

I cycled past a backerei that was open on Sundays and bought a coffee and croissant to eat in the adjacent park.

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Schloß

Then a morning of roads – as I was off the quiet cycle route the hi-vis and helmet came back out. There are a lot of big and fast cars over here and the cars behave much as in the UK.

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I reached the house in the picture to find an access verboten sign

Lunch was a burger at the only place that I found open. By afternoon I had met back up with the national cycle route R1. At one point I got interviewed for my feedback on the national cycle route and signposting by someone working for the organisation. It is good to see they are interested in improving an already well implemented and maintained system.

My batteries were running low (literally) – I had only 6% left on my satnav, so I decided to once again use booking.com to find a discounted hotel nearby (£32 inc breakfast) but not before a quick stop off at a tea room for some cherry cake..

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Cherry cake and coffee

Hotel is pretty decent and I had some soup and gnocchi for dinner to recharge my own batteries.

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Hotel has le Petit Prince as bed time reading

Bielefeld to Bad Meinberg, 64 km. Total so far = 716 km.

2 thoughts on “Day 9 : Introducing hills”

  1. Hi James!
    This is Joachim, a friend of your father Dave.
    You’re in Westphalia, home of the Saxons. Please come and stay at our hotel. Since your dad never made it here you can stay for free.
    Get back to me.
    Best,
    Joachim

    Reply
    • Hi Joachim – thanks for your very kind offer but I’m heading South to München. I was really impressed with Münster and will be returning so will be in touch in due course 🙂 It’s a beautiful part of the world.

      Reply

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