The plan for today was to re-do one of my original rides, the one round Elbsee and Unterbacher See, but to see if I could avoid the very off-road section that had been a bit awkward last time.
I trotted downstairs and got the bike out of the car. Puncture. Same wheel. Clearly I hadn’t fixed it properly last time.
So I fetched my track pump and set to changing the tube again. This time I checked the tyre really carefully visually (couldn’t see anything), then decided to run my finger gently around the inside. Ouch! A tiny, tiny green thorn was sticking out. This appeared to be the cause and would explain why it was a slow puncture coming home.
So… I put the tube that I had repaired yesterday back in, put the holey tube and the track pump back in my room, and set off.
Another plan for today was to visit Rad Ab and Magno, bike shops, to buy a replacement café lock. Both shops are in Friedrichstraße which is sort-of towards the main station so was clearly somewhere to visit at the end of my loop.
I set off along the Radwege which were, once again, covered in leaves and twigs and small branches following the wind yesterday evening.
This route is particularly nice to start with as it’s all on very decent cycle paths. I was soon cycling through a wood on a gravelly path which is a reasonable surface.
Today was the day for seeing golden retrievers and yellow labradors – I saw dozens of ’em, including giving one rather a fright as he didn’t know what I was.
Here is the Elbsee, lovely and still following yesterday’s cracking storm.
I then do a long bit parallel to the road, then under it, then back the other way. This wasn’t quite as pleasant as you could always hear the road whilst cycling, but visually was very green with dappled sunlight.
At one point the path appeared to be blocked by a fallen tree:
But not with a recumbent trike – I removed the flag whilst cycling along and rode straight under the tree, putting the flag back on underway. Some pedestrians were most impressed.
Then I arrived at the Unterbacher See which is much larger and has a couple of beach areas. Here I am looking across at one of them, although at 10am it was a bit early for the crowds, plus it’s a fair bit cooler today.
My trike is flying the English flag again today.
Rather than following the woodland footpaths past the Unterbacher See I used my Garmin to find a road and followed that instead; it had a cycle path by the side and was fine, if a bit noisy and with rather a lot of twigs and branches under-tyre.
When I was approaching Düsseldorf I set my Garmin to take me directly to the bike shops in Friedrichstraße but in fact cycled past a HUGE cycle warehouse (Zweirad XXXL) so decided to pop in there for a lock. They had an excellent selection and I bought a decent but light Abus one. I also bought a spare inner tube in case I had more problems as the two spares I currently have are fairly well covered in patches. I also noticed that this bike shop had tyres my size in stock – both Big Apples and Marathons – if I need any more (which I don’t at the moment). They were also slightly cheaper than in England…
I came directly home after that via the bakery at the end of the road and treated myself to a Berliner (a jam doughnut to you, although when in Berlin one calls it a Krapfen).