Today was our penultimate day of the tour and the first where the weather forecast suggested some rain might appear. In fact we had rain for one minute over the whole day so our luck held!
After a good breakfast we were ready to leave at 08:30, heading out of Steinhude and towards Wunstorf.
Here is the original planned route for the day, but we would now be stopping 8km earlier in Dreierwalde.
It was much cooler as we started this morning without much blue sky in evidence.
We passed this impressive mountain (Kaliwerk Sigmundshall) which is the leavings from a salt mine. It’s a bad photo taken whilst cycling but I guess you can get the idea.
Here is a better pic from the internet
The first section of this ride was really nice, with quiet roads wending their way through villages and towns. We ended up on a Landstraße which became a bit busier as we rode along it. At 40km the track took us off the main road and we crossed a bridge next to a power station. This was the Schleusekanal, a short cut for the Weser river.
We stopped for a drink and Klaus changed his radio batteries. They have been lasting very well on this tour – about 8 days’ usage before the battery gets too weak. They are so useful with Velomobiles as it’s hard to talk to each other otherwise when you are 500 metres ahead.
Shortly after this stop (where I had to walk around a bit as my feet were complaining) we crossed the Weser river.
Straight after this bridge the cycle path made us leave the main road – and this was such a steep descent that we walked down. Klaus had ridden down first in Celeste but suggested he helped me wheel Millie down. She was quite tricky to hold back as she wanted to launch herself down the slope…
We followed the cycle path which took us through a park and we had to cycle over some grass, so off-roading again. At this point we decided as we had lost the cycling rhythm we would stop for some cake.
We were not too sure about how nice it would be to ride on the L770 Landstraße now as it had been pretty busy on the bridge over the Weser. Looking at our Garmins we saw there was a road parallel and so we took that for the next 10km. It then brought us back to the original Landstraße and we joined that road.
Fortunately there was a wide hard shoulder on the road which cyclists are allowed to use and this Seitenstreifen was great quality and enabled us to keep riding at a steady tempo, despite riding into a headwind. We had a sector of 25km at an average speed of 33km/h whilst whizzing along the road past Espelkamp. This is good fun in Velomobiles and we enjoyed ourselves immensely, covering the ground at great speed.
We were approaching Osnabrück but then our route took us off this fast road and on the L766 north towards Haldem.
There was a real hill in front of us and I had a horrible feeling we might need to climb it but fortunately the route turned west again, although we did have to climb a little bit which slowed me down a lot!
Past Drohne we saw roadworks signs and diversions. We hoped we could get through the road closure but sadly not, and we had a couple of abortive routefinding attempts before we got on a lovely stony track which would get us around the road closure.
As we had slowed our pace and warmed down a bit we thought we could stop for lunch – we had ridden 100km. We looked first in Hunteberg for somewhere to eat but the Eiscafé was closed. We rode on.
The next quite long section of road, the Lutterdamm, was in rather a bad state of repair. If we rode down the middle it was ok but when cars came the other way or wanted to pass us and we had to keep right it was very bumpy indeed! And of course no food places came into sight.
I looked ahead on Google Maps and 6km further, in the village of Lappenstuhl, there was a restaurant and also a pizzeria. Hurrah!
When we arrived in Lappenstuhl the restaurant was closed. Never mind, we rode on to the Pizzeria. We arrived at the spot on Google Maps and it was just a normal residential house. So no food in Lappenstuhl.
We headed back onto our track, knowing that Bramsche wasn’t far away and Klaus had eaten food there on his solo tour! Although that was a McDonalds!
Whilst riding here we saw lots of signs for the Varusschlacht. I had no idea what this was but it was actually a decisive battle in Roman times and Klaus started quoting various phrases (in German). There is a Wikipedia explanation here: Battle of Teutoburg Forest.
After a few more kilometres we arrived in Bramsche and stopped at the first restaurant we saw, a Turkish place, where we had Turkish pizza which is pretending to be a wrap.
We had about another 45km to go and set off through Bramsche, with Klaus getting a bit ahead. At Hemke I turned off the main road, following the track along the K102. I was surprised I didn’t catch Klaus up as there was a very strong headwind and he hadn’t been that far ahead. Then I got a text message – he had missed the turning at Hemke and was behind me. He also wanted to slow down a bit as the cappuccino he had drunk had rather elevated his heart rate. He suggested I rode ahead at my own speed but I waited for him – we were riding this tour together!
We crossed the Mittellandkanal twice within a few kilometres.
We rode at a comfortable pace, mostly on the cycle path beside the road as these were pretty good quality. The final kilometres were disappearing behind us and we crossed back into Nordrhein-Westfalen. We had first crossed into NRW early in the day but then had been back into Niedersachsen for quite a while.
Finally we arrived at the hotel in Dreierwalde and were met by the hotel owner who was about to take his dog for a walk/bike ride. She was a Weimaraner – I used to have one and I love these dogs! Our room was fine and we showered and washed the other; even though we didn’t really need to I didn’t want to have smelly damp clothes to transport tomorrow, I would rather have washed and dried cycling gear!
Here is Klaus’s Strava upload for the day:
And here is Klaus’s short report of the day:
Vorletzter Tag unserer Tour. Vom Steinhuder Meer 150 Kilometer gen Westen. Nach der gestrigen Tour durch Wolfsburg und Hannover konnte es heute eigentlich nur besser werden. Das Gewitter war ja schon gestern abend durchgezogen und es war kein Regen angesagt. Das Steinhuder Meer war am morgen etwas “aufgeregt”. Wahrscheinlich gekitzelt durch den ungestümen Westwind, der uns den ganzen Tag stramm ins Gesicht blasen sollte.
Nach ca. 35km hatten wir die Weser bei Petershagen überquert…Zeit für einen ersten Stopp…Philadelphia-Schnitte. Der nächste Schlag ging dann 70 Kilometer bis nach Bramsche. Die Landschaft ist recht abwechslungsreich und die Route war im Großen und Ganzen gut befahrbar. In Bramsche haben wir dann unser verdientes Mittagessen zu uns genommen.
Och weiß nicht so recht warum und weshalb. Aber kurz nachdem wir losgefahren waren fühlte ich mich plötzlich nicht so gut. Ein eigenartiges Gefühl, wenn man plötzlich das eigene Herz spürt. Eventuell war es der Cappuccino. Ich habe kurz Helen Bescheid gegeben, dass ich die nächsten 45 Kilometer das Tempo etwas rausnehme und sie ruhig ihren eigenen Speed radeln könnte. Sie blieb aber trotzdem immer an meiner Seite. Es ist beruhigend eine zuverlässige Partnerin an der Seite zu haben.
Die letzten Kilometer bin so durchgerollt und habe den Puls immer schön unter 130 gehalten. Eigentlich hätte ich so noch weiter rollen können. Morgen kommt die letzte Etappe und irgendwie möchte ich nicht aufhören. Das Leben ist so schön einfach und man kann es mit all seinen Sinnen aufnehmen. Man verpasst zu viel im Alltagstrott. Wir werden auf jeden Fall in Kürze mit der Planung für nächstes Jahr beginnen
We decided to eat dinner in the hotel and it was very nice, and good value too!
We are both a bit gloomy that the tour is almost at an end but, as Klaus said above, we are already planning the next one!
Tomorrow is 140km back to Kempen, returning via Ahaus, Stadtlohn, Südlohn and Wesel, so roads we have done twice already in the last three weeks. It is a fairly fast route too. And the weather is looking kind again. Hurrah!
[EDIT] It has been pointed out to me that my photo of Klaus and Josef in Berlin is in the Guardian newspaper. Josef tweeted the photo and it was picked up by the Guardian. You can see it here: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jun/16/we-shared-the-road-our-hopes-and-visions-a-week-of-cycle-conversations