#59 The Lower Elbe

I’ve cycled many of the main river-, canal- and rail-trails of Europe. The Loire, the Moselle, the Rhine, the Danube and the Vitava Rivers, the Vennbahnweg rail trail, and the Nantes-to-Brest and Rhine-to-Rhône canals are all great.  So too is the upper section of the Elbe from Melnik to Dresden.  But…

the Elbe River floodplain below Dresden is a  bit boring, to be honest.  The river meanders through a generally wide and flat plain, with a series of levee banks or dykes on both sides to contain the river for many kilometers.

Responsive map: use two fingers to zoom in/ out or click ‘expand’ icon to view full page

Cycling along here gets to be quite monotonous, with the levee bank hiding any view.  In some other sections, the bike path either leaves the river entirely or disappears as a B road for long stretches.

Also, northwest winds prevail in Spring (in the opposite direction to the general direction of the flow of the Elbe), and for most of the time I was heading into a moderate breeze or pushed from the side.  It also rained on 5 out of the 6 days, which is also typical for this time of year.  It wasn’t a heavy rain, just a persistent drizzle that penetrated right through to my core.

Sunday 12 May 2019.  Dresden · Torgau |110 km|

I left the Apart Hotel in Dresden at 10 am accompanied by the raucous clamouring of a multitude of church-bells that nearly did my head in, and cycled straight onto an Umleitung (road closure diversion) in the town centre, with no further directions as to how to get back on track, but I eventually did manage to find my way back onto the Elberadweg by zeroing-in on the cathedral spire.

Once onto the proper path, the riding was easy enough and the path was well-signposted, but the Elbe river flats are wider now and the ride not as interesting as before.

Animals – first sheep, then cows and horses – started appearing in numbers that I hadn’t seen for the past 3 weeks.  I guess they’re finally beginning to emerge from a winter of being kept in the barns.

I was cycling generally in a north-westerly direction into a constant strong (and freezing cold) wind from the west for most of the day and could only make decent progress in TURBO mode.   Consequently, I had used up most of the battery by the time I stopped at  Gastätte Fereinhof Reichert at 2pm to charge the batteries and have a meal.  They seemed to have a private function of sorts going on inside, and I was banished to the cold and blustery beer garden.  The asparagus soup was actually quite nice, and the German-style lamb shank was passable, but overall they weren’t particularly friendly and I saw nicer places further on that I wished I had stopped at instead.  But isn’t that always the way?  Grass is greener…etc..etc.

Directed by Ziggy’s GPS, I rolled into the neglected campground of “Campingplatz Am Großen Teich” on the outskirts of Torgau at 6pm and managed to get a comfy night’s rest for €10.  Fortunately, since they had no facilities, after my big and late lunch I wasn’t particularly hungry, and could make do with just coffee and a simple pasta and tuna dish cooked on my little gas burner.

Monday 13 May 2019.  Torgau · Dessau |112 km|

[Cool but not cold, clear but not cloudless, and with a slight head breeze]

I crossed the river on a very interesting ferry, of a type that is fairly common on the Elbe (I went on three of them).  The ferry has no motor at all, but just swings back and forth across the river like a pendulum, tethered to an anchored buoy about 400m upstream.  By simply slackening or tightening the yoke-cable at one end of the barge or the other they can make it go across stream in one direction or the other, as the river current pushes harder on the shorter-yoked end of the craft which makes it go in that direction, as desired.

The cycle path surface had changed again – to a paving style, with grass growing up through the cracks. It is bumpy and not so enjoyable to ride on.

In down-town Luther Stadt Wittenburg, I sat in the friendly Eis Café Venice for 2 hours gobbling bruschetta and ice-cream and drinking cappuccinos and coca cola (all up: €11.80) while re-charging the batteries

The town is still cashing in on the name of it’s most illustrious citizen: the reformer of the Christian faith, Martin Luther (and NOT, as some American tourist wanted to know, Martin Luther King!).  I declined the guided tour.

After Wittenburg there was another river crossing at Coswig back over to the left bank on one of those ‘pendulum ferries’.  The Elbe is meandering now and was flowing east at this point, which greatly confused me in establishing whether I was headed in the right direction or not when I got off the ferry next to the pub.  Because of all this meandering of the river, though, the Elberadweg itself just heads off in a direct westerly direction through a forest, which makes a nice change.

 

On a whim, I pulled in to a Penzion out in the forest called Fursthaus Leiner Berg, run by a fellow named Dierk, and after a few beers took a room for €36. He provided dinner – simple fare of wild boar bratwurst with kraut and potato salad plus 3 beers – for an extra €13.50.  That’s my room at the top left window in the picture below.

 

Haha: silly me though – I didn’t check the room thoroughly on arrival, and instead of having to get up, get dressed, go outside and cross the yard to go to the loo, which I’d been doing, I had my own en suite facilities.  I only discovered this in the morning as I left.

Tuesday 14 May 2019.  Dessau · Magdeburg |112 km|

I thought I would be off to a good start at 8 o’clock, but I discovered I had a slow puncture in the new rear tube that I’d fitted near Königstein only 2 days ago.  I used up a can of spray foam on it to stop the leak and headed off, hoping for the best, but by the time I got into Dessau proper at 9am, only 5km further on, it had gone down a bit already.

So I hung around Dessau till 10 am waiting for a bike shop to open with the intention of getting a new tyre – I figured something embedded in the tread must be causing the flats.  But when the shops finally did open, I was given the cold shoulder by not one but two bike shops – they all seem to really hate changing tyres, these bike shops – and so I just bought another new tube from one of them anyway.  In the meantime I just pumped the leaking tube up again and this time it lasted OK all day.

There were 3 ferries in today’s trip, all taking considerable time…

….and by the time I got to Magdeburg to charge up in an ice cream parlour for an hour it was already past 5 pm and I was running out of overnighting options.

Magdeburg itself is an unattractive industrial city surrounded by a confusing maze of both natural and artificial lakes and canals running every which way.  I found a camp with the aid of Ziggy’s GPS at “Campingplatz Barleber See”, which has an on-site restaurant, of sorts (goulash soup for me).

Wednesday 15 May 2019.  Magdeburg · Werben |123 km|

There was frost on the ground this morning, but I wasn’t at all cold in the tent for once, as I’d rugged up pretty well.  Incessant noise from a 24-hour sand and gravel mining operation less than 2-kilometres away was a bit of a problem though.

I was ready to get away at 7.15, but that damn rear tyre was flat again!   The foam hadn’t worked after all.

It was extremely frustrating that I couldn’t find the puncture itself, nor anything embedded in the tyre that must be causing all these punctures.  So I changed the tube for the one I bought in Dessau yesterday, and then had to wait until 9 am before finally heading off anyway, in order to return the shower key and get my €10 deposit back.  I had also pulled the cable clean out of my camping adapter when I removed the plug from the power socket this morning, so we’ll see how my repair job of that turned out, and whether I fry my batteries next time I use it.

I promptly made an unscheduled detour of 12 km after getting lost exiting the Camping Platz, and headed off onto the Elbe-Havel Canal by mistake, going in the wrong direction as far as the town of Burg.  At least I was able to get a handy map booklet of the entire Elberadweg for free from the disinterested tourist info guy in Burg, and I was able to use this map effectively for the rest of my journey all the way to Cuxhaven at the mouth of the Elbe.

There was a stiff head wind all morning and I’d only made 60 km before there were less than 2 cells of battery power remaining, so I stopped at the pretty town of Tangermunde in a friendly coffee shop for 1½ hours to recharge.

But in the end I only moved on another 60 km anyway, as far as the outskirts of the little town of Werben, and camped at the very primitive “Campingplatz Schwimmbad Werben”.  The amiable lady in the swimming pool canteen made me a schnitzel (from frozen) and potato salad dinner, plus 2 x ½-litre bottles of beer, all for €13.

Thursday 16 May 2019.  Werben · Hitzacker |115 km|

It rained all night and was still raining when I packed up and left Schwimmbad Werben at 8.15 this morning – after pumping up the rear tyre yet again as it had gone flat during the night.  I had to repump it (200 strokes) every 15-20 km that day – no point in changing the tube again because by now I was certain some microscopically-small item must be stuck in the tyre tread and causing small punctures.  Oh, and the tent stayed wet in the bag for 3 days before I could dry it out.

Three successive bike shops didn’t seem to even know how to change the tyre, let alone have a new one to sell me, until, in the town of Dömitz, the lady in the bike shop there did have one and said she’d change it for me for €25.   The problem was her husband though, who insisted on micromanaging operations, and was a mean, irascible old sod who knew absolutely nothing about bike maintenance but thought he knew everything.

It got to the stage where I finally had to assert control and insisted on showing him how to break the bead on the tyre to get it off before he ruined the rim – and he didn’t take kindly to being taught how to do it either, the crotchety old bugger.  In the end though, I also bought a new mirror off him, and his wife fixed the wiring to my rear light too – finally it works again, after 3 weeks on the blink.

Once again, I’d used up a lot of the day (3 hours in Dömitz) getting the bike attended to, and besides, I found it very tedious cycling in the pouring rain, so I ended up splurging on a room at the Hotel Hafen Hitzacker in the pretty town of Hitzacker.

The hotel owner/chef/waiter – another Dierk –  was friendly and advised me to go to Hamburg on the other side of the river (I’d just crossed back over to his side on the ferry), which was valuable information.

His restaurant, though, was too fancy for my tastes, so I got an excellent doner kebab and a couple of beers from the Istanbul Grill down the street for €6 inclusive. Who says you can’t eat cheap(ly) in Germany.

Friday 17 May 2019.  Hitzacker · Hamburg |110 km|

[Fine but overcast day, not so cold]

I had to wait for 50 minutes for the ferryman to start work at 9.00am to take me back across to the right (east) bank. So much for getting up early!

But since it was a fine overcast day and not at all cold,  I’m not complaining.  I made incredibly good time of it along the top of the levee bank for 50km into Boizenburg and on to Lauenburg, and then lost the bicycle track.  Completely.  Never did find it again before Hamburg either.

From Lauenburg I rode in complete safety on a cycle lane of the busy B5 road all the way in to central Hamburg.

After a bit of searching, I found a reasonable hotel for a ‘reasonable’ price (The Senator; €120 per night, for 2 nights) in the ‘famous’ Lange Reihe street in the St. Georg district, which is pretty much in the thick of things as far as lively Hamburg is concerned.

But Hamburg is built on too grand a scale to truly enjoy.  At least, I found it not to be an enjoyable city to go walking around sightseeing as all the ugly majestic buildings are not built to a human scale.  But there is a vibrant social scene going on in Hamburg and I am enjoying it immensely.  Reminds me a lot of Madrid, actually.

-ends-

Europe 2019.  Dresden to Hamburg. 682 km

Europe 2019.  The trip so far:  Maastricht to Hamburg |3,042 km|

Responsive map: use two fingers to zoom in/ out or click ‘expand’ icon to view full page