Nettetal – a short ride with Poppy in the basket (Saturday 11 August)

I’m staying in a little hamlet outside Nettetal-Lobberich which is called Sassenfeld. That’s also the name of the road that runs through it with lots of little side roads which have a dozen or so houses. All around are fields of sweetcorn, cut hay and more.

I have a very pleasant two-storey apartment which is on the first floor and second floor of a new building (one year old). I have to walk up a flight of metal steps to reach my front door and balcony but it has a very unexpected advantage – Poppy won’t walk over the metal grill so I can leave the front door open and she can stand on the balcony looking out on the world.

Here she is:

And here is a view of the ground floor of my apartment.

Of course, Poppy will bark if she sees another dog whilst out on the balcony (although lots of people round here have dogs that bark when you walk past so it seems to be considered OK) but she was doing some extra-loud woofing last night so I had to go outside to see why – it was one of those fire-breathing dragon things!

This morning I thought I’d take Poppy out on the trike to give her a bit of a change. This was after our early morning walk of course (a short up and down the lane to give her a loo opportunity) so I fitted the dog basket to the trike and we were ready to go.

Poppy has developed an annoying habit of barking when we set off on the bike and I’ve been trying to reduce this. The system is, as soon as she barks I stop dead and don’t do a thing until she’s been quiet for 10 seconds, at which point I carry on. This is difficult at home due to lots of cars on the road but was a bit easier here, but it can get a bit frustrating.

Here is the track of our journey:

I set off westwards to start to visit the De Witt See again but couldn’t find a way to actually get to the water side (there was a big café area which had fenced it off). I gave up with this lake and decided to head on to the Krickenbecker See again.

You can see a few short bits where I turned back – one time I was defeated by some chain-link fencing with a small gap to allow bikes through but it was too sharp a turn for me to get the trike through with the dog on the back (too heavy to lift the back end round with her on) so I decided to carry on the main road which was actually quite an extra distance.

Hinsbecker Strasse, the B509, is quite a busy road but it had a decent quality cycle path beside it so we used that.

We arrived at the Krickenbecker See and I let Poppy off the bike for a run around.

It’s such a beautiful and tranquil scene.

Here is the trike enjoying its visit

And soon enough the beauty and tranquillity were reduced by a cockapoo going for a swim

Which means we end up with wet dog syndrome

…which was fun when I had to lift her back into the bike basket.

We headed back with our traditional detour to the supermarket in Wevelinghoven were various passers-by chatted to me about Poppy on the bike. I bought myself an Apfeltasche for elevenses and as the mug selection at my apartment doesn’t really meet my strict criteria I bought a decent large mug too. It says it’s for Cappuccino but it seems to cope OK with Tetley Drawstring tea.

I plan to go out this afternoon on my trike without the dog as she does make it hard work!

Total distance: 9.32 miles
Moving time: 1 hours 00 minutes
Average speed: 9.3mph
Average heart rate: 99
Maximum heart rate: 138
Calories burned: 220

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