Day 6: Hamburg to Fehmarn
- Distance: 158km 🙂 — Less than planned but enough
- Climbing: 948m ☹️ — This really felt like a hilly day. Hard work
- Undercarriage: 🙂 — Everything…”down there”…seemed to be fine.
- Route: 😕 — Quite tricky in places and a lot of rolling countryside.
- Body: 😔 - Still no improvement in the fingers and a new appearance from my right ankle which is ominously aching at times.
- Bike: 😔 — I lost my chain lube (of which more below).
Much to my surprise, it wasn’t raining when I woke up in Hamburg and I felt good. Raring to go. I packed up quickly, pulled on my beautifully clean and sweet smelling cycle gear, ate some breakfast and then unpacked in the lobby again when I realised that I couldn’t find my chain lube. Due to some screw up in the Hotel’s booking system I had to change rooms from the first night to the second night and in the confusion, I must have left the chain lube in the first room. A search of the hotel didn’t turn up anything but took a lot of time and so I left a lot later than expected.
Attentive readers may have realised that it’s been quite wet in the past few days and a lot of water has the tendency to wash all the oil (or “lube” as it is known in cycling circles) from the chain, cassette, jockey wheels, pedals etc etc. Therefore you need to lube the chain every day. Well, you do if you have lube. I had a choice, I could wait until 10am when the first hipster bike shop owners opened their shops or just put up with the squeaking. I put up with the squeaking.
Getting out of a big city is painful. Squeak squeak. It’s basically 10km of stuff like this. Squeak squeak.
Lots and lots of junctions
After about an hour, I’d reached the equivalent of Walthamstow. Squeak squeak squeak. There was a short cloud burst but I was proudly wearing my new rain coat and so my upper body stayed quite dry. My shorts didn’t stay dry. Squeak squeak squeak. It was then that I found out why my shorts and top smelled so fragrant. I hadn’t set the rinse cycle on the washing machine and so my kit was basically impregnated with washing powder. As I squeaked along, my shorts started to foam at the crotch. I was looking for an open bike shop to buy some oil but there’s no way you wants to stop in the equivalent of Walthamstow with a foamy crotch. Squeak squeak squeak squeak.
Another cloud burst of rain cleared off the worst of the foam and after 30km I squeaked loudly into Bargteheide. I bought a coffee from a lovely lady in a bakery and asked in my google-translate-powered German about the possibility of a bike shop in Bargteheide. It turned out that there was one but as far as google translate could work out, the man that ran it was an ugly lazy man who probably wouldn’t be there.
Please be open
Happiness is lube
The route really started “rolling”. No stupid insanely steep cols but just endless rolling countryside. I stopped for lunch in a garage and had a traditional German delicacy.
Less said about this the better
As I crested a motorway bridge, I saw a really interesting bit of electrification infrastructure. Feel free to skip this section if this sort of thing doesn’t interest you.
Wow
This looks ominous
Apple weather isn’t wrong
This part of Germany is rural — often, and in this case correctly, a synonym for “smells of dung” — and so it is lots of small villages with little thatched cottages and it feels a lot like Norfolk to be honest.
Not easy to be a sexy fireman in this fire truck.
This resort is set up for wind and rain
Crazy golf is universal in rainy seaside resorts.
I was hoping to follow the shore but, of course, the route curved back up into the rolling countryside and I still had about 50km to go. On any day, the last 50km are always the hardest and today was no exception. Lots of punchy climbs and the wind started to veer (or is it back) round and wasn’t quite as encouragingly behind me as it had been for the rest of the day.
My destination Fehmarn is on an island which is the last bit of Germany before Denmark. I had to cross a bridge to get there which was…challenging.
Looks graceful and easy…
…actually a 30cm wide bike path and traffic everywhere
The hotel is very funky. The owner is a strange woman with a singsong voice who sits (squats?) in a bullet proof plexiglass box. She was very keen that I pay for the room tonight and really wasn’t keen on paying with a card. There is a sort of brooding and scary handiman guy who took my bike away and indicated with sign language that it would be safe — although maybe the sign language meant “I’m going to stick this in the furnace”. Who knows? I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.
I had to go to the local equivalent of Boots to buy a bar of soap because the singsong lady wanted to charge me 5 euros for more soap.
I asked for the WiFi password but that took about 15 minutes to get since the singsong woman had to get the printer to work and then printed out a WiFi password of ludicrous complexity. If you’re ever in Fehmarn and want to steal some of that sweet sweet WiFi bandwidth from the Hotel Hasselbarth, here’s the password 1AihW1Svct52q7hHTBqi <sigh>.
I’d booked a room for one adult and so the hotel had thoughtfully removed the other duvet from the room in case I was thinking of sneaking my secret family in the back door later.
You booked for one person and that’s what you’re getting. Note tiny sweet on the duvet…
Although the hotel gets a plus for having a thermonuclear towel rail, it does loose some marks for supplying the smallest bottle of shower gel I’ve ever seen.
A euro and a bottle of chain lube for scale.
Fehmarn feels exactly like a Norfolk or Northumberland seaside resort. It’s a bit down at heel, the patrons are a bit down at heel, there’s a few fancy boutiques set up by people who wanted to move here to get away from it all which are going to close down in a year or so. All the visitors are grimly enjoying themselves eating mediocre food under umbrellas as it continues to rain.
I am actually enjoying myself a lot while I eat mediocre food under an umbrella. Today was a good day all in all. The mixed weather is now something I can cope with. Legs feel good and, now I’m out of the endless plains of Germany, there’s a lot more to see and enjoy.
Tomorrow I get up early, negotiate breakfast with singsong lady and then head to the ferry which is about 8km from here. I have no ticket and absolutely no idea how to get on the ferry with my bike but I’m going to assume I can work it out. Then it’s my first day in Denmark. Country four. Not bad.
Ewan, it’s Luke. Just wanted to say I have very little interest in cycling but these blogs are thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable. Good luck!
ReplyDelete