Day 51, Butzow to Mustin, D

The view as I was eating supper at the Landgasthof Mustin

This will be my third night of camping - out of 50 days of riding - on this tour. I believe that ties my personal record for camping on a tour < grin >. I'm camping because I was running out of options - the hotel where I wanted to stay was full, the second hotel, about 10 km away, where they sent me was closed, and I was heading for yet another city, Ratzeburg, when I saw a small sign for the Landgasthof Mustin. I knew as I walked up - it is small resort on a lake and this is a beautiful Friday night in late July - that I was unlikely to find a room, but I needed water and I needed to eat, so, at worst I'd fulfill those needs and ride on in search of a place to stay.

The owner was kind enough to say that I could camp here, so now I'm sitting in the - very nice - restaurant while creating this web page. I had an excellent supper - Lachs, which is German for Lox, and a variety of salad stuff and bread and, of course, beer. Then I set up my small tent in a discrete area where it will be shaded from the morning sun and cleaned up throughly before starting this report. Life is good.

The first radweg sign I saw today

I started today with a good breakfast. Then I replaced my Top Contact rear tire with a TT2000. The Top Contact, after 5500 km was only about half worn, but it had developed a whump. I first notice this when I entered Germany. The road here are much smoother than the roads in the other countries I have ridden in on this tour, so I figured it had probably been there for a while. The next day, it seemed a little worse. The day after that it was definitely worse. Yesterday I could feel an added side motion to the thump. Something was wrong with the tires cord structure and it was getting worse. I could barely see the distortion when I examined the tire, but I could sure feel it when coasting on smooth roads. since I had a spare - actually, I am carrying two spares - and I was staying in a good place for work on the bike, I replaced it.

I'm quite disappointed in Conti's Top touring tire. Yes, I subjected it to extremely bad roads, but I subject TT2000s to those same roads and never had tire cord failure. There is no visible damage to the rim (and it is still true within about 1/16") so I don't think under inflation was a cause. I checked, with my thumb, air pressure every day and added air when it was need. I think I added air about every two weeks. The front tire, a Conti Contact is fine and shows very little wear.

After fixing that problem, I loaded my bike and headed for the road to Rhun where the next section of the radweg started. The sections near Butzow are extremely well marked, so that part of today's radweg was easy to find and follow. The 'radweg' started on a narrow, busy, bumpy road that ran southwest toward the nearby town of Rhun. At Rhun, it turned to the northwest on pleasant road with little traffic.

The road got smaller as the radweg passed through several villages. Most of those villages had old cobblestone main, and usually only, streets. Then, after the village of Lasse, the radweg was a two track, sandy, dirt road through the woods. That lasted for 2 km - it felt like a lot longer! Then there was some more cobblestone and finally it got back to a variety of relatively smooth pavement.

The road got small

Then it was a small dirt road which became two sandy tracks with grass in the middle
This section was also hilly with some pretty steep down hills.

Then it went back to smooth small road

With some interesting variations

The road finally worked its way back to normal road about 10 km later, in Gross Raden. At that point I had a choice to continue on the radweg to Gross Gornow, or continue on south on the big road to Sternberg. It was 11:30 and I wanted lunch so I went south. I had another donner and beer lunch there and road b104 to Bruel and then went north - bad cross wind - to Warin. The later part of the road to Warin was through forest which blocked the wind and was very pretty.

The road to Warin

At Warin, I found the Hamburg-Ruden Radweg again - It was easy to find since it ran on the main street of Warin and was well signed - and headed off on small roads towards Lake Schweriner. the riding was nice and the signage was pretty good, but I think I ended up on the alternate route which went north above the top of the lake. In any event, as I started down the west side of the lake, I ran into a detour that required me to go out to B106. I went out and, since I'd have to hunt for the radweg again, I didn't come back.

I rode b106 - not too pleasant with high traffic levels and no shoulder or bike path most of the way - down to near Schwerin where 104 and 106 combined and went west toward Gadebusch. That was much easier riding with bigger lanes, less traffic and a good tail wind. then I04 turned northwest toward Gadebusch and the riding was not as easy, but not bad.

The first part of B104/B106 on the way to Gadebusch

Gadebusch was dead, or damn close to it. I rode through it for km - on cobblestone! - and saw only a handful of people. Then I saw a hotel. It was closed, but I'd seen signs for another hotel so I asked about it at a bakery and found it pretty easily. It looked really good, but it was full - Friday night in late July - oh, oh. The very nice lady at that hotel called another hotel about ten km away and they said I could stay there. I rode to that hotel and found it closed! I have no idea what was messed up, but now I was heading for Ratzeburg, so I decided to continue on in that direction and search for a place to stay. About half way - 10 km - there, in the very small town of Mustin, I found one.

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