April 3rd & 4th, 2016

April 4, 2016

The hassles I had as described in my previous post also meant I had to alter my route towards my immediate destination, the home of my friend Benjamin Kniebe
in South Berlin. I more or less lost a day due to that problem, now I expect to arrive in the German capital on Thursday instead of Wednesday. I am coming up to a major North/South river called the Elbe soon. As there are only a couple of bridge crossings and I dont want to get a ferry I needed to be careful that I planned my route towards Berlin with this in mind. I have noticed that Eastern germany is not as infrastructurally sophisticated as in the west. Also many small towns, villages and building are often pretty drab. The facilities including bicycle paths are lesser here and I noticed that since I arrived in the former DDR that my mobile 3G connection is pretty poor. Thanks to Benjamin for texting me some route advice when I can't get online!
Sunday I churned out a 35 km day before settling down for the night camped in a forest. On the way I passed this signpost which was set up by an enterprising bar owner, however I did not see my start finish location of Run Logic running store listed! Ash Senyk
please get on the phone! I did take a note of the distance to Moscow, I am getting close, it's about 1,000 km to the Russian border. I am having a late brunch in a Subway restaurant in Stendal, 25km so far today. Gotta walk!


 



April 3, 2016

Latest: 824km about 514 miles for 29 road days.
Friday I walked another glorious 43 km mostly through a lonely national park in which I only spotted one tractor and two bicycles in 25km bliss! Before that on the way to Gifhorn, perhaps a suitably named place I passed dozens of camper vans and camper vans parked at the side of grassy verges which all had hot women at the steering wheels. The motor homes had funky lights and sound systems, obviously ladies of the day! Further on I had to keep pulling up my pants and need to look for a belt as already I have lost eight kilos since the walk began! Indeed I really did have to strip off as that day was the first really warm day since I began, I was down to my base layer.
Yesterday, Saturday my bliss became a nightmare when I got to the River Ohne and couldn't pass it as my gravel road deteriorated into a narrow dangerous track that sloped towards the river! As it was four km long I felt it was best to backtrack and at times I had to cross swampy fields. Some times my path was blocked with closures where people had dumped trees to close it. The end result was a 40 plus day was only logged as 25 km further progress in my logbook frown emoticon
On the way I passed over the old border between old west and East Germany. There were dozens I watchtowers which border guards watched for escapees to the west. I can understand how difficult it must have been to try to escape and by the end of the day I had decided that the best way was not to cross a junction at a corner as these watch towers are strategically placed. I am told now that they are use by hunters.
I write this about 7km east of Klotze at 10am having breakfast in a cafe. The waitress told me they were closing for the day! A frustrating point about travelling through Germany is the amount of places, cafés, restaurants bars an shops that close early, in Ireland or the UK almost every village has something open! It's amazing that Germany has the largest economy in Europe!
I am having problems with my wifi connection so sorry for lack of photos I will update when possible. I am currently in Klotze

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