Day 10, Tour09 Anklam to Friedrichshof, Germany

Today was a big day for me in several respects. I rode for seven hours and covered 75 miles. with quite a few miles of less than optimal pavement, e.g cobblestone(!) which slowed me down. I was averaging 12.5mph on B109 before I got off onto lesser, and in some cases much more fun, roads. I also reached, and rode for 30 miles or so, the Oder-Niesse Radweg. I ended my day off that radweg - I decided to follow my GPS for the last part of the day - at a a very nice place in a small town that doesn't get much tourist business. That probably saved me at least 20 Euro.

What happened when I asked for a light supper of only veggies. It was very good!
So was the .8 liters of beer I had with it it ;-}!

Yesterday, I said I'd take the train for 100 km and then start riding, but yesterday the weather was lousy and today the weather was lovely. It was too nice to ride on a train when I could be bicycling! I knew that the ride to Pasewalk - about 50 km on B109 - was an easy ride since I rode it the other way last year, so I decided it would probably be a good ride for my A-Fib impaired body. It was. I had to experiment to find out how to get my body working properly, but, by doing that, I managed to average 12.5 mph for those 50 km, which is pretty close to my non A-Fib average. Light winds from the west helped, but mostly it was the flat road which allowed me to use my limited power efficiently.

B109 has moderately wide lanes but minimal shoulders

It does have a bike path next to it roughly half of the time between Anklam and Pasewalk

I had to stop and snack twice on the way to Pasewalk. The first time, at about half the way, was sort of optional, but the second stop, only 5 km from Pasewalk wasn't optional. I needed to stop, rest, and snack in order to be able to continue riding. As it turned out, it was good that I made that stop since I was unable to stop for lunch, as I had planned, in Pasewalk.

I knew the road I needed to take to get to the Oder-Niesse Radweg since I had ridden it, coming from Poland, last year. It is the main road through Pasewalk, a fairly big city - like Anklam - in these parts. This year, it was gone. It seems that they are totally reconstructing that road. I saw that it was marked as not usable - they put a diagonal slash through its name on the road signs - but I turned anyway in the hope that I might be able to make my way through the construction on my bicycle. I couldn't, so I went back to 109 and headed south thinking there would be another way for me to get to Pasewalk. My GPS didn't find one. When I got to the next town on b109, it found a back road way to get to Locknitz, the next big town east from Pasewalk and a town on the Oder-Niesse Radweg. That route turned out to be quite and adventure for me!

Why pave the whole road when you can just pave the places where the tires go?

Two great technologies - cobblestone roads and Wind turbines!

A good dirt road is SO much better that a cobblestone road when you are on a bicycle!

Signs on the dirt road in the, beautiful, forest

The day before yesterday, I got to Anklam about 2:30, and my friend invited me along on a sort of family outing. We went to Kamp. Kamp is a small port town about 8 km from Anklam which, among other things, has a ferry across the Stettiner Haff to one of the small towns I rode through after I left Usedom. This ferry is very popular with bicycle tourists. Kamp has a festival once a year and we went to that festival. It was great fun, but getting there involved riding on a variety of small roads ranging from two concrete paths for the tires of the vehicle to cobblestone. There were also one lane roads with regular turnouts so oncoming cars could pass. It was interesting to see these alternative styles of roads the day before yesterday, and today, I got to ride on all of them, and three kinds of dirt roads, because of the road construction in Pasewalk.

The two concrete lanes weren't bad and neither were the good dirt roads, but I rode several long stretches of cobblestone that were a real pain in the butt. The route from my GPS was a very good route in that it used back roads that went were I needed to go to get on the Radweg. It was also a good route in that, except for the cobblestone, it was really nice riding. I figure it added about 30 minutes to my day's riding - seven hours of actual riding - and included some of the best riding of the day, or for that matter, the tour.

B104 near Locknitz

The road I got to B104 on

A wind turbine being repaired
You can see how big the turbine is
by looking at the vehicle at its base

Just before I got back on B104, I was riding on a dirt road through a large 'Wind Park.' I had been riding near other Wind Parks - groups of wind turbines - most of the day. This one, when I did get back to B104, turned out to have been the one I sat watching while I ate lunch near Locknitz last summer.

Last summer, I got pastries for lunch in Locknitz, but then I noticed a Bulgarian restaurant. This year I ate at the restaurant and then got pastries to take with me. That turned out to be a good move since I didn't see any other place to eat until I found the gasthaus I'm staying at.

I left Locknitz headed south and, not far down this road, found a sign for the Oder-Niesse Radweg

I rode the radweg to near Penkun, and then, because the radweg climbed a cobblestone road and my GPS suggested a route that was smoothly paved, switched over to GPS navigation. That cost me at least 4 km, but they were smoothly paved km ;-}, and got me to the excellent and inexpensive place where I spent the night, 3 km from Gartz which is where the radweg goes into Unteres National Park.

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