Your back tyre looks a bit flat said Sylvie as we went to set off, nope it can't be I replied that's my new industrial unimpenetrable super duper marathan shwalbe tyre. Sylvie poked it, it was flat! The man who had sold it to me said oooooo you're on to a good thing here if you get a puncture you'll be ruining my statistic of only 3 punctures in 3.5 years, well mr bike shop owner I have added you to the mental list of people who will be receiving a letter from me about the poor performance of their equipment (this is one of things I do whilst cycling along, compose imaginary letters to people!).
As we had a ferry to catch and only a short ride we left with me still not quite able to beleive I had a puncture in my back tyre.
After a lovely ferry ride (I love ferries, probably because as a small child I got given a twix for helping the ferry man in Dartmouth clean the seats as we cruised along) accross the water to Bremerhaven we found a good spot and with me still muttering in disbelief fixed the puncture. Now we really were on our way..........
TWO HOURS LATER we found our way out of Bremerhaven! mental note to self, next time I do a trip through a city on a bike take a more detailed map of the city. We had been having a bit of trouble in all the towns we been through finding our way out of the otherside but this was insane! Every route we took ended up somewhere really obscure. Finally we stopped at a bike shop hoping they may know the nearby cycle routes, they didn't but did print us off some very detailed instructions, in German! Anyhoo they pointed us in the right direction and 2 minutes down the road we found a cycle route sign and follwed that instead.
The wind was up again, it was cold and we didn't seem to be getting anywhere at all along the map. We struggled on until lunchtime, where we stopped in a little village where as had been the case the whole morning all the shops were shut, and the cafe, even though it was lunchtime! We were really low on meths (for the cooker, not us, we'd not slumped that low yet!) and Sylv spotted a hardware shop which promised to open at 1.30 so we jigged around for a bit to keep warm until the shop keeper returned from lunch. After trying to explain what we needed, we gave up and started sniffing bottles of various solvent like substances, Sylvie spotted a likely looking candidate and after the shop keeper had given it a good sniff we decided it would do.
He also gave us some very good directions and we cycled off a little happier. We had resigned ourself that due to our late start we would only be able to do half our planned journey that day, but when we reached Haemer our planned halfway point around 4, we decided to push on and try and make our second ferry crossing of the day.
We cracked it, we cycled like absolute demons (Sylvie was possible fueled by one final search for the perfect meths, stopping at a garden centre to see if they had exactly what we needed, she came rushing out 2 minutes later saying that she had taken a huge sniff of something toxic and her nose was burning! She was fine) and arrived at the ferry to take us to Gluckstad.
On the ferry we met Manuel, a German man coming back from a business trip, he was travelling on a recumbent bike, have you seen one? They are the bikes that are low to the ground and you have a seat with a back on it and you steer with your hands. They look kind of strange but fairly whizz along and he said they were great for long journeys. He was staying in the hostel in Gluckstad and as it was now almost dark and the rain was setting in we decided to stay there too, which meant we were about 12 miles shy of our actual destination Itzehoe.
The hostel was lovely and too exhausted to go out to eat we were pleased to see chips and salad on the in-house menu. We tucked in and after a few too many chips we went to up to bed.
About 55 miles today and a super afternoon riding.
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