Geoff Jones

Today was the final day of me biking alongside The Elbe. I decided to keep to the East bank to Brunsbuttel as I wanted to cycle on into Denmark and the ferry from the West bank across the mouth is meant to be very irregular.

At Sandra’s suggestion I visited the ‘New Hamburg.  HafenCity is in the old docks, I didn’t find it to inspiring although certainly much better than her other suggestion, the dual carriageway called Reeperbahn which seems in terminal decline.

I left along a pathway which can’t make it’s mind up whether you can cycle along or not! at least it’s flat and avoids the cars & a hill. The views of the docks are very good and it’s interesting to see a ship dedicated to shipping bits of aircraft around for the great Airbus project.

Once out of the city the wind became ferocious blowing directly of the North Sea straight into my face 🙁 I had quite a few heavy squalls of rain as well so weather wise not the best of days. I was beginning to think you should definitely cycle The Elbe from North to South.

The cross channel ferry was operating but with a vast queue of several kilometres long waiting for the trip to Cuxhaven a side effect was a lady had set up a wagon selling fishy buns etc and drinks so I could stoke the boiler again.

It was getting quite late when I finally arrived for the crossing of the Kiel canal, by ferry. Interesting to see a vast container ship nudging its way into the lock, I finally made it into Brunsbuttel at 6pm to find the first hotel full the second hotel a smokers den & more with the third hotel also full, I was starting to get a bit concerned 🙁 However, a charming lady across from the hotel ran a classic b&b, loads of little notices & very fussy but at least a bed with views over the river but no internet on the day of The Apple iWatch event & my 1GB of phone date used up even though it was on GPRS all the time.

The final Elbe Stats are:

So biking The Elbe was 1,010km in 11 days of cycling. The surprising number to me is the 9042 feet of ascent, so it isn’t that flat! The other & more surprising to me, apart from the miserableness of other cyclists, is the poor quality of the internet. O2 could only offer GPRS throughout the trip except for a bit of 3G in the biggest cities. In the hotels speeds on WiFi were appalling every bit as bad as remote Cornwall. Staggering for a so called rich country famed for it’s engineering prowess.

My Strava for the day is here and pictures here

After last nights heavy rain & thunderstorms this morning was shrouded in thick mist. Today was going to be a short biking day so I thought I would go easy on the breakfast 🙂 although it’s incredibly hard to resist the brown bread rolls covered in sunflower seeds.

I eventually left at half past ten, after doing a blog post and answering loads of emails. Just around the corner you pass the now defunct Krümmel Nuclear Power Plant capable of producing in it’s heyday 10,000 GWh per year, always fascinating to me that Nuclear Power  Plants seem to be built near borders!  To continue the energy theme a mile or so further on there is a hydro electric scheme generating an annual 10GWh since 1958. I loved the few solar panels tagged onto the hillside.

The route was along dedicated cycle tracks for most of the way through farmland with lots of greenhouses, in Funfhausen it started to rain so made time for a plum tart & coffee both delicious.

Hamburg has very little urban sprawl so you seem to go from farmland to city centre very quickly. I eventually found my way to Carens for a coffee & some of her daughters cale 🙂 then for a quick walk and ice cream around the lake.

You can run around a lake and they have a cunning electronic system by Alster so you can automatically time yourself.

In the evening I met up to stay with Sandra,  Em’s au pair from 19 years ago, her husband & two gorgeous girls. Pleased to say she has decent internet but unbelievably O2 is still on GPRS in this part of Central Hamburg.

Strava says I did nearly 31 miles the days photos are here.