For a while now the weather forecasts have been indicating that today (Sunday) maybe a wet day for us on the Weser Radweg. We were pleased to have made it as far as Nienburg before we had to deal with an actual day of rain. The good news is that Nienburg has a train station that offers regular service to our next stop of Verden.
We also hoped that an updated weather forecast would provide some hope of a window of dry conditions for the planned 50 KM ride. But if anything, the forecasted wet hours were increasing and it appeared that it would be showery all day in Nienburg and part of the day in Verden. When we woke up this morning the showers were fairly consistent and we had to concede, ¨train it is¨.
We had organized to have breakfast at our hotel today. It was also a good way to prolong our departure time and the restaurant style versus a buffet breakfast was a nice change. Everything was prepared and brought to our table. We took our time and only slightly missed the 10 o`clock check out. With the short 1.5 KM ride to the train station we were in time for a train to Verden that departed at 11:45.
Nienburg`s church of St. Martin in the heart of the old town.
When we booked our stay in Niemburg we thought the name was a bit odd for hotel in a German town. But the previous guests' reviews convinced us it was not a Tijuana two star.
The train station. We purchased our tickets at a self serve machine at the station with relative ease. We were surprised that the tickets for the bikes cost almost as much as ours.
Pat was checking with these ladies about the need to validate tickets as we have done in other countries. The answer was no and that they would be checked on board.
The train trip was a short 25 minutes which left us with 3 hours to wait before we could check in to our hotel in Verden. We were able to leave our bags at the hotel and we enjoyed our time looking around the town, window shopping as the stores were all closed being Sunday and having lunch at an Italian restaurant.
Verden is located in the Middle Weser region on the Aller River immediately before its confluence with the Weser. As a centre of horse breeding and equestrian sports, it bears the nickname Equestrian City. The suffix "Aller" became established at a time when the name "Verden" was also used in German for the French city of Verdun. It is another pretty German town with wonderful historic buildings and extensive pedestrian streets. The town was very quiet on this on and off showery Sunday, but we enjoyed our visit.
Translation: A bicycle street! Made it easy to get to our hotel.
We have stayed in a few hotels showing the Bett and Bike certification. Translation is bed and bike. This organisation provides a quality certificate for bike-friendly accommodation.
We checked in to our hotel shortly after 2 pm and spent the afternoon catching up on trip details before having dinner at a popular local bar / restaurant. Tomorrow's weather forecast shows improvement so we plan to complete our last day on the Weser Radweg with a ride to Bremen.
