Follow the Red Brick Road

The crossing from Harwick to the hook of Holland was a straight forward journey. From there on it was a case of learning how to use the bike roads. But to be fair the first 700 miles have been mostly straight forward. A few navigations problems and problems finding somewhere to camp aside. As you would expect.

It has been a little dissappointing being wet nearly everyday and took a bit of getting used to. But now I expect it. Not quite the summer I thought that I was going to be chasing though!

Now I complained about the cycle roads a lot to begin with. I actually found them hard to navigate. This is the first place that I have come across in the world that has such fully developed facilities for bicycles. From the Holland to Poland I must of cycled nearly three quarters of the distance on these roads. No cars, very few bicycles and in general a good surface.

Though I was never too fond of the bumpy red brick sections in towns. Also I couldn't understand why they went to the bother of making these paths and not lowering the kerbs properly? The time that a car almost hit me at a junction wasn't great either. It resulted in the crown jewels making a very hard contact with the top bar. The price I made for not letting a car hit me! To be fair the driver did the right thing by apologising and laughing at my pain like anyone would do in that situation.

So maybe it is an idea that could catch on. The only problem I had was when I would ride on roads to bypass a town. The bike paths would always take a longer route through towns which after seeing a few housing estates the appeal of avoiding them on the road grew. This quite often led to abuse from drivers. Good for learning German swear words though. But the further east I went the less a problem this seemed but I think that was me just getting better at navigating in Germany. So maybe the abuse was due.

Germany is without doubt the greenest country that I have visited to date. From the first morning of riding in Germany until arriving in Poland no matter which direction that you were to look you would see a wind turbine. There were that many of them that I even had to camp underneath one of the beasts. I felt like I was on a beach beside the sea. Each swoosh of the blades sounding like a gentle wave rolling on to a golden beach. It made for a good night sleep.

I have lost track of time and now work out days by miles. Today 80 tomorrow 100 and so on. Although each day is exactly the same: pedal, stop eat, pedal, stop eat, camp and sleep. Each day is of course different as the further I chase my shaddow around the world the greater the cultural differences from home become.

So next stop Moscow........