The last part of our ride yesterday required that we leave the official Berlin-Kopenhagen route and travel about three kilometres on the road K6520 to Blumenow. Travelling on the road, something that we have been reluctant to do in Germany, worked well as it was wide and not at all busy. This morning we needed to travel about five kilometres further along the same road to rejoin The B-K route at Zabelsdorf / Marienthal.
The village church in Blumenow is from the second half of the 13th century and is a registered architectural monument.
A new bike route sign that we may not have not seen before. From the internet, ¨The Havelradweg belongs to Germany's most beautiful river cycle paths. At 344 kilometers, the Havel River is a good 30 kilometers shorter than the actual cycle path, but that clearly speaks for it's countless unique natural oases and the intoxicating urban landscape.¨
Just beyond Marienthal, we met up with the B-K cycle route again and cycled 10KM through a lake and river filled area that had previously been used for high quality brick-making. The abundant clay was cut piece by piece manually with razor sharp spades. When the open cast mines were mined out they were filled with ground water and are now used for recreational purposes. At the beginning of the 20th century, the nearby Mildenberg Brickworks Park was one of the largest brickworks in Europe with up to 5,000 workers hand cutting the clay in the 1880s. In the period before the First World War, about 1.75 million tons of bricks were transported on the nearby Voss Canal to Berlin each year.
A picture from an information poster beside the road. You can see that there are a lot of lakes now in this area.
A Hoffmann ring kiln is a type of continuous kiln that was patented in 1858 by the German inventor Friedrich Eduard Hoffmann. This type of kiln revolutionised brick production in the 20th century.
After a quick stop in Zehdenick for coffee we rode beside the Voss Canal for about 15KM. Not long after leaving the canal and passing through Liebenwalde we entered a forested section for another 15KM, taking us all the way to Oranienberg.
Canal riding is okay for a bit but often not much changes for long stretches.
We wished that our day ended in Oranienburg as the weather had turned to showers. Here we began to realize that we still had 6KM to go through the busy afternoon city streets to find our hotel in Germendor. It was a tough 6 KM to end what had been a nice day of riding.
We were tired, damp and a bit stressed when we finally found our way into our hotel parking lot. One saving grace was that the hotel was connected to quite a good Italian restaurant. The rest of the day was pretty simple with a bar and dinner right next door. With anticipation, we looked forward to completing the final leg of this stage to Berlin tomorrow.
Not our dinner but we did have them as table guests. There was a large koi pond in the centre of the dining area.
