Today, as we take a day off from cycling to visit the Emigration museum in Bremerhaven (with help from German Rail and 49 euro monthly national roaming tickets), I’ll let pictures of the former concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen, on our road from Hanover to Luneburg, speak for themselves. Liberated by the British army in the … Read more …
Hamlin of ratcatching fame from the Brothers Grimm fairy tales has to be one of Germany’s prettiest old towns – and there’s a lot of competition. Hamlin – Hameln in German – is quietly understated, but beautifully preserved and proud of the 1284 story which history suggests was probably to do with local youngsters being … Read more …
Germany certainly doesn’t do food by halves. The portions here at the Westfaelischer Hof in Luegde (2 x 70km days, and moral of the story is don’t expect to camp if arriving after six…) are gigantic, and delicious. Huntsman’s Schnitzel for Jutta and mine overbaked with cheese and mushrooms. Subtle they ain’t, but talk about … Read more …
Saturday May 6, Coronation Day back home, finds us in Lippstadt in the German Sauerland just short of Bielefeld, having visited (for the second time on our tandem) the Moehne dam of Dambusters memory in 1943. For Germany, even though at least 1500 people died, mostly forced labourers from then Nazi-occupied territories to the East … Read more …
For this post, rather than writing a whole load of text, let the images tell the story. I ‘ll try to position in them in the right order, so for our tandem journey Tuesday May 2-Wednesday May 3, follow the pictures and the captions, and we’ll hope to raise a smile. Read more …
In England when Jutta and I pedal past on our tandem Daisy2, the all-too-common cry from onlookers hoping to be enormously amusing is that “She’s Not Pedalling On The Back!” Ho ho. (It’s not). It’s indeed such a universal tandem experience that a couple of fellow cyclists used that cry as the website address for … Read more …
Ah well, Vermeer went so well that a price had to be paid. Today, Day 1 of Week 2 of Daisy’s 12-week odyssey around Germany and Northern Europe, saw us repairing two further rear punctures and having to hammer the arms of our Bob trailer straight after our heavy rear panniers knocked one side off … Read more …
With thanks again to Tiffany and Greg for hosting us in Amsterdam, their massive and special gift as Friends of the Rijksmuseum was to be able to take us both, one at a time, to see perhaps the best art exhibition I for one have ever experienced. I may not know much about art etc … Read more …
Yes, our first puncture. Albeit in the UK before the Harwich ferry (the surfaces and roads here in NL are already dramatically cleaner and safer). Sorted in 20 minutes, which is a good augury – and reminder that while for the next three months to Gdansk and back, scenery, history, people, countries, cultures and conversations … Read more …
Shaft of light just short of Orford in Suffolk (itself 30 miles short of our immediate destination today, the port of Harwich) almost illuminating one of the silliest routing decisions we’ve ever taken on a tandem tour, taking us through fields, grass and narrowest of footpath gates after narrrowest of gates round the Alde estuary. … Read more …