Day 49, Anklam to Malchin, D

Today I started riding a long distance bike route that goes to Hamburg. It didn't go through Anklam, although three other long distance bike routes do, so I spent the first part of my riding day getting to Demmin and the second part on the bike route. Demmin. like Anklam, is a city that was in the Hanseatic League - the first trade organization in northern Europe - some 1200 years ago.

Heading south from Anklam on small roads

The cobblestone road though the second village

I talked with my host in Anklam about routing and he recommend a route that went south and east from Anklam on small roads. I left Anklam heading south, following that route. The small roads between villages were great but some of the roads in the villages were very old, and very rough, cobblestone. Even without a damaged rack, I would have been reluctant to ride them and with a damaged rack, I simply couldn't take the risk of rack failure. I turned around and went back to Anklam using a different, small road, route.

In Anklam, I stopped at a bakery - the bakery I stopped at the first time I was in Anklam - and got pastries and bread for the day, then I headed for Demmin on B110.

I saw at least a dozen wind farms like this one on B110 today

B110

I rode B110 for 48 km, stopping twice to snack. There was a bike path part - only a small part - of the way but traffic was light so riding on the road, even with narrow lanes and no shoulder, was OK. The most interesting part of the ride, for me, was the number of wind farms I saw south of Anklam and along B110. Germany leads Europe - and the US - in the percentage of electrical power generated by wind farms.

In Demmin, I stopped at a Chinese restaurant - run by Vietnamese - for a late lunch and then went to the tourist information place -- by the train station - to get info on the long distance radweg - Hamburg-Ruden - that goes through Demmin. The info place was great. I left there with several pounds of literature including a local map, a book on the radwegs in this part of Germany and a book with information on places to stay.

Both my bike and my body are hurting - my bad knee has been a problem since the really rough ride south from Torun, my back is slowly recovering from its train related damage, and I feel like I have a cold - so I need to take it easy this week. That works well since my friends in Hamburg got home, after five months on the road, last weekend and need some time to settle in before I get there. I want to get to their place on Sunday afternoon, so I have four days - Thursday through Sunday - to ride about 350 km, mostly on radwegs.

Demmin

On the radweg to Malchin

I rode south out of Demmin on a radweg which was signed for Malchin, about 30 km away. That part of the radweg was a bike path that was a rails to trails conversion. Other parts of the path were conventional bike paths along small roads and very small roads. The route runs near a big lake and through a number of small town so the views were nice and the riding was a lot more interesting than riding on a bigger roads. I saw several groups of German tourists including one family with young children and the usual older tourists like I saw on the Danau Radweg.

A sailboat on the lake

A one lane road with a pullout so cars can get by each other
There was very little traffic on this road

When I got to Malchin, I went into town - cobblestone roads and the remnants of a medieval wall - and found a hotel/restaurant for the night. With a light supper and an excellent(!) breakfast, my cost will be less than 40 E. Now I'm heading for Buztow, which I think is 80 or 90 km away following the Hamburg-Ruden Radweg.

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