Battling the headwinds

Everyone is fatigued today - no surprises there.

Weather: light rain at breakfast which clears but it is overcast, cloudy, cold (10 deg C). Then the sun comes out slightly and the day brightens somewhat but that wind is incessant!

After a very nice breakfast, we head off through the town. Hitzacker is certainly pretty. 

The ferry Hitzacker-Bitter is not working; I knew this but Gabriela said to just call the number on the sign at the ferry point. We were making a ‘dog’s breakfast’ of the phone call in our poor German but fortunately a local couple with electric bikes turned up and we handed the phone to them and they sorted it out! How fortunate. So an enterprising local has an outboard motor ‘tinny’ with a modified bow - thankfully! - that allows bikes to be rolled on and off. He is offering a service to replace the ferry that has closed - and you just pay him what you think the service is worth. I pulled out a 5 Euro note, and the German couple indicated that was fine (for the 3 of us plus 3 bikes).

So our itinerary today has changed. I had planned that we ride on the left hand side of the river due to the ferry closure, but Gabriela said we’d be better off on the other side away from hills and roads - sounded like a good plan to me! The weather improves for a while.

It is a birders paradise: waders, ducks, eagles, hawks. We often have flocks of geese flying overhead in V-formations, honking loudly.

Fruit trees laden: apples, quinces, the tallest pear trees I have ever seen - some with huge ladders to reach the fruit; often the fruit is just fermenting on the ground where it has fallen. Nuts of all types.

We stopped at a gorgeous cafe at Stiepelse (anywhere to stop today had been off the track, and we weren’t feeling up to any extra kms!) - coffee and beetroot cake: delicious; Crowded House playing in the background on the sound system, nice people. Dark clouds threatening.

While we waited for MF1 (again), we watched a thatched/roofed house being re-roofed.

The morning had been nice but the wind was picking up and, shortly after our morning tea break, it intensified. I have never ridden into anything like it. There were white caps on the water in the river, the sky was black and it was freeeezing - I put on an extra top at Boizenburg while the boys ate their picnic lunch; I was still full from the beetroot cake. 

It was time to ‘make a call’. There is a station here: do we take a train or keep battling headwinds for the next 19 or more kilometers? It was 3 kms to the station, back the way we’d come. The train was not direct; we would have to go up the line a certain distance, and change trains for Lauenburg. There probably weren’t many trains either. It could mean 3 kms back and then if the wait period for a train was unsatisfactory we would have wasted time AND ridden an extra 6 kms there and back; but then again: the wind was terrible.

We decided to ‘suck it up’ and then miracle of miracles: the bike track actually diverted away from the river and even though we had to go uphill, we were sheltered from the wind! It was raining by now and very cold but we knuckled down. There was a Nazi concentration camp near Boizenburg and we pass a place called Checkpoint Harry which is now a restaurant.

Before long we had reached Lauenburg, situated on the Elbe-Lübeck canal. The sun even emerged weakly.

The 800-year-old shipping town has a picturesque old town on the banks of the Elbe with wonky half-timbered houses. 

It is great to get in at a decent hour (about 4 p.m.) and have time to unwind. We go for a walk later along the cobble-stoned streets and find a really nice place for dinner as the sun goes down.

MF1 ‘lashes out’ and tries matjes - a marinated raw herring, very popular in this part of Germany.

Cycling distance: 53 kms