120 km, Schwerin-Heiligergrabe
The first thing we did in Schwerin was to get gel insoles for Isak, who has suffered from numb toes and has tried most other remedies that Google suggested. The gel insoles seem to do the job.
Today we gave the GPS a town much further away than normally, and asked it to take us there. It did, mostly on "pleasant" small roads (mostly full of pitholes=Strassenschaeden) throgh villages (Brunow, Berge, Ziegendorf) consisting of a church, sometimes a fire station, and houses. We probably went 80 km without seeing any kind of groceries shop or even a petrol station, and were wondering if anyone actually lived in the villages, or if it was all Potemkin facades, some of it at least. We later learnt that the eastern part of Germany has lost a lot of its population, not only after 1990, but the negative trend started in the 50's. Some states have lost over half its population since then.
Eventually, we came to a small town, Putlitz, where we found a Lidl shop where we bought salad, sandwiches, etc., and had a picnic by the side of their parking lot.
The last bit of the journey, some easy forty km in tailwind was now ahead of us, and it was just after 7pm. An easy job to get there before dark. We thought... Our Garmin flagship cycling GPS, the Edge 810, decided that the fastest route was via something best described as a three km long field of boulders, named Könkendorfer Weg. Thank you, Garmin. Please mark this road as unridable. The best way through this road was to walk on the side of the road, except for where fallen branches covered both the side of the "road". It made us long back to the Strassenschaeden signs of Ziegendorf, which now in comparison, despite its potholes, resembled the Autobahn.
Coming back to civilization 40 minutes later, we had to find accomodation as it was getting dark. This time, the GPS found us a few nearby hotels, just six km away. Racing against the Sun, we arrived to one of the them just after 10 pm.
Today's journey could win the Award "The Worst Roads of Germany". Oh myyy.. :D
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