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Germany


A quiet German road. I didn't see any European flags in the UK or the Netherlands but I've already seen two in the first ... Some cows. I've often seen figures like this in Germany, often promoting fétes. These ones look like they are f... The German flag and the Australian Aboriginal flag flying outside a restaurant. Coesfeld. Coesfeld. I guess that 1703 is the date of the tower's construction. The Old Town Hall in Winterswikj had a to... A sign for some local walking routes, including our old friend the ... Coesfeld. I didn't know it when taking the picture but I'm about to go up the sloping avenue of trees and then... An unusually-shaped mast. The top of the ridge. Thistles. This is where I'll be staying tonight. In the first few years of these summer trips, common sights in Germany were cigarette machines in th... A war memorial. Roxel, a town on the edge of Münster. That spire doesn't look right. My hotel is on the left, with handy bike parking just outside. The forecast shows that the bike will... For the second night in a row, I have windows which open wide. I could tell at a glance that last ni... I nearly get a view of the Überwasser Church. The room comes with a very small complimentary bag of sweets. I don't really know why a room which has water on tap provides one bottle of water for free but woul... Looking towards the West end of St. Paul's Cathedral. The two towers are the oldest part of it and d... He looks like some king of medieval reenactor. I didn't see any others. St. Paul's Cathedral. Münster. I would later learn that the three cages which you can just see hanging above the clock face of St. ... Another tower. From down here in the shopping street, it sounds like the sound of church bells is coming from up th... St. Ludger's Church at the end of a major shopping street. At the right-hand end of its red roof is ... Münster. Münster. Münster. A pub which presumably dates from 1724, where people are trying to ignore the noisy alarm which is g... The turquoise scooters must be part of a hire scheme. They each have a QR code on the handlebars. Th... There's not much to see in this picture but there was some quite loud raucous activity going on outs... This hotel has quite a niche review. Münster. Just another building. Today, I will be going to Bielefeld. There is a conspiracy theory which says that the city doesn't e... The bike lanes are laid out for hook turns. A curving level crossing. There is a barrier in the trees on the left which can close the bike lane.... A new road. Here comes a train. For about an hour, my route is like this. Corn growing. A farm. At Warendorf station. The river Ems. I stayed close to it for most of the day but didn't often get to see it. Harsenwinkel and Greffen are where I'm going. Scenery. Sunflowers and corn. I passed several shrines like this today but the back of this one caught my eye. It looks to me like... Wow, look what it is. This is like early 2000s Germany. I saw a few more of those signs about church... There is a low pass through that ridge. The city of Bielefeld is mostly on the other side of the rid... Cyclists have to pass on the wrong side. Follow the pink brick road. A strange sight in an upstairs window. Bielefeld! It does exist! Bielefeld. Bike parking right in front of my hotel. One of the reviews of this hotel was from somebody saying t... The view from my window does include parts of Sparrenburg Castle and St. Mary's Church... ... but it's mainly tramlines... ... which is probably why you get free earplugs in the room. I'm getting the impression that Bielefeld is quite a wealthy city. Bielefeld. An unusual clock. These plates come in a wide range of colours. Just a little shopping arcade. There's a building missing here. I didn't get close enough to find out who he was. A little weather station. This side shows the intensity of the sunlight and the speed and direction ... Bielefeld, see? Bielefeld. Bielefeld. Bielefeld. Bielefeld. Appropriate place for it. The sky still looks quite dramatic even though the forecast says that the rain has now gone. Bielefeld has the same scooters as Münster. They are obviously electric because the riders don't pus... A large open space. Behind my hotel. Sparrenburg Castle tower at night. Jupiter was also making appearances through gaps in the cloud but I didn't get a good picture of it. The breakfast room is strangely quiet. The food is good though. A golden bike. These ones are parked but not obviously charging. I've come back to a bike shop which I saw while ou... I think these are all part of Bielefeld City Hall, a building which appears to extend over four city... A toen called Herford. I recognise that scallop shell on the sign. It's the logo of the Camino de Sa... The canal forms a moat around the old town centre. Here's that church from a couple of pictures ago. Sure enough, it's called Jacobi Kirche and has a s... The ten small black squares had names on them. At first, I assumed they were people who had paid for... Herford. Can I get a cheap bugatti? Oh. This Bugatti seems to be a clothing company. A view from the bike lane. Tiny fir trees. My route through the corn. This cat looked like it was stalking something. A pair of knobbly trees flanking my route. I will soon pass under that bridge, and then later under a similar one with blue cables. At this weir, some of the water gets to take the stairs. That's odd. I was riding along the edge of the river. The the cycle route took me round a few houses... Communications towers look very bare these days, now that most signals are sent through optical fibr... Pears. The River Weser. Like yesterday, today ends by approaching a serious-looking ridge and then rinding a sneaky way thro... The Weser bike route is pretty popular. Another view. The Weser bike route. Approaching where the river goes through the ridge. Another bare tower. By the river. Cyclists. A monument to Kaiser Wilhelm overlooking where the river cuts through the ridge. With people for scale. A pleasure boat which I also saw near where the hammock was. The caravan is just passing the sign which ends the speed limit. It didn't particularly seem to resp... Looking towards Minden. An old railway siding. Minden station. You know I said I likes steps in hotels? Here I get one actually in my room. The bathroom keyhole is an unusual shape. It's also strange that there is a keyhole at all since the... I was worried when I came out of my room and saw a panier in the corridor. There must be another cyc... My bike is parked over there by the station, where what looks like a coal train is currently going p... To get into the town, I have to cross the river and a place where the river once was. The Kaiser, seen from 5.1 km away. Minden. Minden. By the river. Narrow alleyways. Minden. I've found another bike shop but it's even further away from my hotel than the one in Bielefeld was.... A glimpse of the cathedral. The building with the pointy roof has a smaller pointy roof on the left, next to the top right corne... The same building. It looks like the squares across the bottom list events in the history of Minden,... The area around the bus station is quiet. A British pub. There is an Irish pub a few doors away. All of the signs for tourist attractions in M... Minden. Minden. Hello, your Majesty. That building has had a very strange loft conversion. On the Weser. As I was going up the stairs after checking in, the receptionnist said that later, I could move my b... A double-decker train attached to a little shunting engine. One for the fans. The bridge is the Mittelland Canal crossing the River Weser. I rode across it on my 2006 trip, when ... Rowers. The other side of the building in ... Going under the canal. This is the other side of the building in ... Just after joining the river, I saw this. Neptune was about 1.6 km further on, suggesting that the s... Windmill and pylon. The river. Crossing the river on a dam. I've seen quite a few of those signs like the one with the tank on it over the last couple of days. You can see some of the cog wheels inside the top of the windmill. The landscape. The sky over this one particular house was thick with birds. Schlüsselburg, a village which I am visiting by mistake. Another view of the river. Some conveyor belts, seen through a bridge. Near a power station. Landesbergen is quite a large village and is a little bit strange in that it has what look distinctl... Nienburg. Nienburg. Oh. I should be on that other road over on the left but, I suppose... while I'm here... apart from a... A temporary blockage on the cycle path. Farm buildings. Woods. The good news is that I'm going to the right. Outside my hotel in Walsrode. Instead of buttons, the lift has a touch-sensitive panel which looks like it was designed for a buil... This is a weird room. There's a fridge under the bed. Enlarging mirrors in the bathroom. The hotel includes a bar in the near corner and a solarium in the corner near the street. The inform... Walsrode. Hmmm. The fire alarms don't work either. All the lights are controlled from the switches on the third panel. They are four rocker switches bu... This whole room is stupid. Whoever designed it can't possibly have had to use it. This is the only d... I see one of the TMRO presenters is wearing their ... The view from my window at night. Today is going to be quite wet but I've just realised that my phone's touch screen still works when ... Soltau. A small library. Someone must have recently given the swirly thing a spin. It's still slowly rotating. There was one ... A circus. Two hides. Part of my route. This is in the town of Amelinghausen. Amelinghausen. The Heath Flower Festival is going on in Amelinghausen. At first, I thought these two were selling d... Amelinghausen. A marching band with at least two xylophones. The band is playing... ... to a very small audience. A trumpeter. Another part of the festival. Amelinghausen. Amelinghausen. This appears to be a folk glockenspiel and sousaphone band. A sausage stand. Possibly some more level crossing fans. Here, people are sitting in rows in a tent facing the road main, which still has traffic flowing. At... As I was riding towards Amelinghausen on the path through the woods, I was overtaken by two men on b... The overflow from a reservoir. Traffic on the way into Lüneburg. The view under a footbridge. Canoes. Here's my hotel. My final shortlist when I was booking tonight was this one and a smaller independen... Hello, your Majesty. It's been raining lightly all day. I thought the forecast this morning said that it would be stoppin... The stitching on my panier is coming undone. I can't complain really. I've been using these paniers ... I've come for a wander into the centre of Lüneburg. It's rather more spectacular than I expected. I'... A sluice. Lüneburg. The church has some very worn stone slabs attached to the outside. The main square. Some of the roof frontages have gone a bit wobbly. Lüneburg. Lüneburg. Lüneburg. What's through here? Lüneburg. Oh. I thought I was heading out of the pretty old part of the town but there's much more of it over ... There are no locks on the bridge where I'm standing but plenty on the railings in the background. A water channel. Mark Twain. I don't know why he's here. A treadwheel crane, like the one in ... Lüneburg. Almost every building in a roughly half mile square is like this. According to Wikipedia, subsidence... Lüneburg. The church of St. Nicolai, which apparently was built between 1407 and 1440, which is about 450 year... Lüneburg. The town hall. I thought it was quite funny that the modern Sparkasse building on the left and the much older-looki... Lüneburg. Lüneburg. The church with the huge stocky tower is St. John's. Lüneburg. Lüneburg. Lüneburg. Some details. Lüneburg. A newer building beyond the station. Lüneburg sky. The water tower in Lüneburg is now an observation tower. I can see a telescope up there. From my room, I can also see the bells of the town hall. On the way out of Lüneburg. The green door on the right might be real and the cabinet to the right of that certainly is but most... Pick-your-own flowers. A farm. The windmill has bunting in the colours of the German flag. The Northern end of the Elbe-Seiten Canal, where it meets the River Elbe. Lauenburg. One end of the bridge which I used to cross the Elbe. As you can see, it also carries trains. The Elbe-Seiten Canal connects the River Elbe to the interior of Western Germany. This is the mouth ... There are a couple of other touring cyclists in this picture. I saw quite a few of them around here.... Like in the Netherlands, I've inadvertantly taken a picture of a row of trees which I am about to fo... One of two excessively large German flags in this village. My route this afternoon will stay quite close to the old border between East and West Germany, altho... Another cyclist. The little bridge which the car is just crossing is where the border used to be. The Elbe-Lübeck Canal. A train just came through as I was approaching. A lake next to the canal. The same canal. A little ferry across the canal. Another cyclist was waiting nearby as if he was hoping to cross her... A boat with masts. The Google route recommended coming off the canal and going this way. I was happy with that because ... Mölln. Fungi. The far side of the lake was East Germany. A fancy weather vane on a house. Just the view while I was waiting at traffic lights on the way into Lübeck. The old part of Lübeck is on an island surrounded by the River Trave. This bridge is how I cross it ... I'm going to be here for two nights. I've now pretty much decided where I want to go for the next se... The room came with one of those ... I can see a bit of the river from my window. One of the reviews described this hotel as "quirky". It doesn't seem all that remarkable t... Outside. One of several models around the old city showing what used to be there. Penguin Chemist. What caught my eye here was the two people on the balcony at the top of the middle building. Lübeck. Spires. The entrance to a clothes shop which is closed for the night. I wonder where the little wooden anima... Lübeck. Lübeck at sunset. Lübeck. Lübeck Cathedral is near my Hotel but I didn't see it all evening. This is St. Mary's. I was amused ... The city council building. In the old arcade. Some other tourists. The railings look old but look like they have been repurposed from somewhere else. The clock on the tower has something missing. Lübeck. Lübeck. There are buttresses across the road like that in several places. A street next to St. James' Church. Heilingen-Geist-Hospital, originally built in 1286. An unusual bike. The river. Near the same place. Buildings on the outer edge of the old city, facing the river. Boats. On the left is one of the bridges out of the old city. The same buttresses that we saw earlier. Lübeck. The remains of something. There are meant to be two or three good bike shops quite near my hotel but I've stumbled across anot... I guess there was never a window tax in Lübeck. This street uses wooden buttresses. That hotel is called "Anno 1216", so I guess that must be when it was built. This might be the best view of St. Mary's Church. I remember this thing. It's the Holstentor, one of two surviving gates into the city. Another tourer photographing his bike. The scaffolding on St. Mary's doesn't seem to have changed much in 16 years.... There is a fairground here now though. Incidentally, while I was browsing to the 2003 original of th... The building on the right was originally a salt warehouse. The footpath now goes through a corner of... The tower has a significant lean but it looks like the windows within it are vertical. Lübeck. One of several shops that I noticed which specialised in marzipan. Back at my hotel. With this shop being called "Bike & Tour", I thought it might sell good touring tyres.... A boat on the river which encircles the old city. Boat. Boat. Boat. Lübeck has seven tall green copper spires. St. Mary's and the cathedral have two each and three othe... The lake in the previous picture includes a small lido. In this picture, the boy in green shorts is ... Like many of the buildings in Lübeck, the cathedral towers are braced against one another. Another swimmer. New and old tyres. They are exactly the same type. The old ones still have plenty of tread but in my... Just a swan. There's an animal on me. My hotel has a partial view of this lake and is probably behind the big tree on the left. I can't re... Despite the bracing, the towers don't look quite straight. This steakhouse with the hotel behind it very much reminds me of the place where stayed 16 years ago... The market in Bad Schwartau. A lone street lamp outside two houses on a rural road. Near here, I saw my second red squirrel of th... Today's landscape is quite hilly. A train. I'm at the seaside again! This is a place called Scharbeutz. You could peer into the holes to see a black and white photograph of what the beach used to look lik... A seagull and a seafront hotel. This is pretty much what the black and white picture showed. Bathers. I would find out later what the narrow towers and the metal arches are. The signs specifically say that this path is for cyclists and rollerskaters. I'm seeing an unusual amount of crazy golf on this trip. The beach. I can't see a bucket but there's a spade. I think I've now moved on from Scharbeutz to Haffkrug. It's looking a bit more classy. A surf school. Another hotel. There's a black dog in the trailer, one of three dogs which I would see in trailers like that along ... Bananas. The entrance to the Hansa-Park theme park. The metal arches which we saw earlier are a roller coaste... ... is this year's new attraction, "Highlander", which claims to be "The world's tall... I tried to get a picture of the drop but it went too fast. Another view of Hansa-Park. The view towards Neustadt. Neustadt. Boats. I'm getting into the region where flagpoles fly groups of Scandinavian flags. I'm interested in "Mona Lisa The Musical" A green field shining in the sun. Hilly. A farm with solar panels. I would be seeing a lot of other leisure cyclists all day. More than I would expect for a weekday. The road which I am on goes straight to the next town, Grömitz, and has cycle lanes. However, I an a... The route over the hill. Wind turbines. Two old houses. Cyclists on the horizon. I recognise that from 2003. It's the bridge to Fehmarn. My route passed between these stones and past the sign which warns that this is a private road and n... A little marina. A train heading for the bridge to Fehmarn. The train crossing the bridge. Oh. This isn't right. I wanted to be up there. Ah, I see what went wrong. I should have gone through the door. A view from a place where I have just stopped to let some cyclists get past in the opposite directio... A view from the bridge... ... including this cyclist who I would later pass as I was going down and he was going up. He seems ... I'm photobombing. A different view. A procession of at least 10 horses which passed me near the end of my day's ride. Red and white cabbages. Burg auf Fehmarn, my destination for today. Because I went wrong a few times, this has become my fir... Wild flowers at the roadside. There's one of those deckchairs off the beach in front of this church. Burg auf Fehmarn. Outside my hotel. Burg auf Fehmarn. A view from where I'm parking my bike. The view in another direction. Tonight's bathroom alone is bigger than my entire room was in Lübeck. I realised years ago that Italian restaurants are good places to eat in Germany because the menu is ...