August 24, 2022
Day 15: To the outskirts of Bremen
It wasn’t the best night. We had at the last minute decided to move the tent so that we would have shade in the morning, not realizing that we were going to be constantly disturbed by a very noisy big green thing that I don’t even know what it was, some kind of pump or tank or something, going on and off all night. Kevin woke up many times unfortunately.
We pottered about at the campsite until the 11:30 kick out time and then hit the road again, and by “road” I mean “bike paths.” Not too bad this morning though, at least until we turned off towards our planned break town of Grasberg and the road and bike path appeared to be completely closed to traffic due to some extensive construction work. We checked our map and had a detour planned when some workers drove past and told us we would be okay to continue on the closed road.
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It reminded us of some other places in the world where we had been allowed to cycle through half finished construction projects. There didn’t seem to be anybody doing any actual constructing so it was quite safe, but after a kilometre or so we came to the start of a section where there was no tarmac, only sand, and we decided the workers had been wrong, we couldn’t go this way. Luckily there was a road off to the side that would provide us with another detour option. Only problem was that this was blocked off to stop traffic entering the construction area. No problem in the end though, as Dea was on the case:
We made it to Grasberg eventually for our break, having cycled 18 kilometres in one go, a new record. And Kevin was even still sleeping when we got there! And there was another record of sorts broken today. For the first time on the trip, two weeks after we set out from home, we came up behind a cyclist who was going slower than we were! This would have been a problem because overtaking on a narrow bike path with a wide trailer is a bit tricky, but luckily we had to turn off in a hundred meters, so we just went along slowly behind her, feeling like proper speedy cyclists.
And we had another “first” during the break - Kevin clapped properly for the first time. And once he figured it out he could hardly stop himself again. It is so amazing to see him developing.
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Unfortunately after Grasberg we had some real stinkers of bike paths. They were horrible, incredibly bumpy, and they really slowed down the progress of these speedy cyclists.
It was a relief to get off the paths and off onto some small roads that pass through some sort of wilderness wetland area outside of Bremen. Now we could cycle freely and it was such a nice area, with hardly any traffic at all and lots of other cyclists. It was a really fantastic place to ride.
But Kevin had woken up and, even though he wasn’t complaining, we thought we might not make it the last five kilometres to our host for the night, and when we saw a nice place we decided to extend our stay in this area by taking one more break. It was a patch of grass beside a river, which looked like a good place for a swim. Dea went in first this time:
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It was late and so we made and ate our dinner during this break, before cycling the last stretch to our “one night tent” host on the outskirts of Bremen. We arrived just before seven, at the same time as Dietrich got home from work. He had the most fascinating garden, with a lot of vegetables growing - Dea especially enjoyed the bean wall - and lots of interesting nooks and crannies, with a sofa made of pallets and a little shelter built up on a roof. It was a cool place, but we preferred the tent.
Today's ride: 33 km (20 miles)
Total: 585 km (363 miles)
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