Bike Path's No More - The End of Day 4

Today's Planned Destination: Just Outside of Bremen

I left Hamburg in better spirits after a good nights sleep and a breakfast in a Hostel. The food and bed were much needed luxuries to get my spirits up again after using the trains, the rain and my lost faith in the bike paths I had chosen. The sun was out and the route to Harburg was a little convoluted with much traffic, bridges and urban sprawl and once in Harburg I lost the bike path again. After about 35 minutes of searching I found a bike store which was immensely helpful giving me a map to me find the way. Unfortunately due to a poor map (or map reading abilities) I struggled to clearly navigate around the lakes and through the Harburg Heights. Once there, the Heights and Nature park Harburger took me up into the fields above the suburban town and wound into the countryside once again. At this point I was again becoming quite frustrated with the German Bike Path Network that I was utilizing both due to inconsistent signage and winding routes. A map I did find very useful for this region can be found at:

http://www.niedersachsen-karte.de/

One thing that is certain, the German bike network takes you to such remote regions of the country that you have little need to worry about car traffic, as people traffic is extremely rare as well between many cities. As the time pushed past 2pm I pushed back trying to pick up the pace, often tempted to abandon the Hamburg-Bremen trail going toward Sittensen due to the nature of the slow progression. As well, along the way, after already losing a T-shirt to an emergency chain cleaning I had my wool sweater fall off the back of my bike somewhere before Sittensen. Now I was minus warmth as well. When I did finally arrive in Sittensen I opted to take the secondary roadways to Zeven as opposed to the bike paths. This was a remarkably fast way to progress making my decision easier to fold up my bike path maps, stow them away and find other means to progress.

If you were to look very closely in the above photo you could almost see the bump in my rear wheel from where it was worn through to the stitched nylon layer. Note: for those who plan a cross Europe trip 700x23c tires are NOT common in the small towns. I would not find a replacement for this wheel until I got to Bremen, which worried me immensely because I didn't pack a spare tire assuming I could find replacements in any of the Local Bike Shops. I could not. They only have a regular supply of 27" touring tires. The rest of the journey was quite straight forward all the way to the beautiful town of Bremen, where bicycling is fully embraced and the roadways have great facilities for this. Most secondary highway have bike paths running beside them in this area. It is NOT necessary to rely on the network of winding bike paths in Germany. If you are going from main town to town you will find paths straight there as well! and they are excellent! The following photo is outside of Bremen where I would spend the night in a park just off the 51 highway. I would use the 51 almost the entire way through Germany. It is clean and quite bike friendly, but there is significant traffic. My day ended late, with one of the most memorable sections of riding during the trip along the dyke network out of Bremen towards Bassum. I slept under a tree beside a small creek which was quite and well hidden from the public. It was truly a great end to an otherwise long (~165km's) and challenging day.

Total time on the bike: ~ 13 hours
Total time from departure to arrival: ~ 14 hours