I had stopped for the night at the Abild Hotel Tønder, Denmark, the room at Abild Hotel was large, comfortable double bed, the shower/toilet was shared, clean enough to have a shower, it was a little difficult for me to stand up in the shower as the ceiling was slanted were the shower had been place. For dinner, I did not have any option than eat the food I had in my bag, as there was no other option available to me around the Abild Hotel.
Tønder is a small town in Denmark, that according to history was first to mention in the mid-12th century, when the Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi mentioned the landmark Tu(r)ndira, which might have been a reference to either Tønder or the nearby town of Møgeltønder. Tønder was granted port privileges by the Hanseatic League in 1243, making it Denmark’s oldest privileged market town. You can read more about Tønder on Wikipedia.
I did not sleep that well, I had been told that they could not take a credit card, so I was thinking about how to get some cash from an ATM. The iPhone came handy in that I have an app loaded from my local bank in the Netherlands, the app has a feature that shows ATM nearest to where you are, I learned that there was 5 ATM’s available in the city of Tønder, so I hatched a plan to get up early to ride into town to get the cash and get back before anyone had woken up. I got some help to wake up as the Abild Hotel are next to the main road, traffic started around 5ish in the morning so I got up rode into town found an ATM, got the cash rode back to the hotel before anyone had woken up.
I ate breakfast, paid for the night, packed up and start biking to my next stop in Germany. I had a quick stop to get water and food for the ride, and then I headed towards Germany, It did not take me that long to get to the border. You know you are in Germany when you see large wind farms, I have noticed that when you cross into Germany being from Netherlands or Denmark you find wind farms, in this part of Germany I also found signage on walls, lamp posts that ask to stop fracking, so not sure what going on in this part of Germany.
The road from Denmark turned into road number 5 in Germany, I carried on as through a number of small towns, my first stop in Germany was in the town of Leck, I came in to town, just around a corner I saw it a bakery, and they had just fresh buns, loaves of bread and sandwiches ready for me to purchase. So yummy – the items I purchased lasted me to Husum. Husum was the birthplace of the novelist Theodor Storm, who coined the epithet “the grey town by the sea”. It is also the home of the annual international piano festival Raritäten der Klaviermusik (Rarities of Piano Music) founded in 1986.
Today was the first real sunny day, when I reached Husum the temperature was 21 degrees, it felt so good with a bit of warm weather, up to this point my cycle trip has been cloudy and wet.
From Husum, I headed to Friedrichstadt a that was founded in 1621 by Dutch settlers. To me it Friedrichstadt looks a bit Dutch, has canals and old architecture that I can find in old Dutch towns. Near Friedrichstadt I crossed the river Eider, headed to Heide followed by the town of Meldorf.
After Meldorf my biggest decisions was how to cross the Kiel Canal a 98-kilometer (61 mi) long freshwater canal that links the North Sea at Brunsbüttel to the Baltic Sea at Kiel-Holtenau. Looking at the map, I thought I could bike over the bridge near Brunsbüttel, when I got there cycling was forbidden on the bridge, I searched around and there was a ferry service in Brunsbüttel take took me over the Kiel Canal.
Took the ferry over, I rode the short distance to Wewelsfleth Germany where I stayed the night at the Ferienzimmer Bärbel Mehlert. Todays route look like this:
Some images from the ride today.
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