I was now in deep Hanseatic League territory. With its capital in Lübeck on the Baltic coast, the League was an international superpower of medieval times, whose sphere of influence grew over four centuries to encompass independent territories from London in the west to Russia in the east. Created to facilitate trade between its member city states, its emergence as a political and military force led it into conflict with the other superpowers of the age, notably England and Holland, and towards its ultimate demise in the latter half of the seventeenth century.
The most obvious twenty-first-century hangovers from the Hanseatic League are the Free Hanseatic Cities of Bremen and Hamburg. They are the two smallest regions of the German state but home to the richest Germans by some distance. According to Eurostat, the EU's statistical agency, per capita incomes for Bremen and Hamburg in 2014 were €46,000 and €59,000 respectively. The next richest German region was Bavaria, with average incomes of 'just' €41,400. The only other places within the EU with more affluent residents than Hamburg were Luxembourg, Brussels and London.
It was now Tuesday, rest day seven and Bremen was my chosen spot to relax. I had stayed at the Campingplatz the previous evening but after a 5 km ride I was in the centre, pondering the day ahead. I knew little about the city but I had an entire day during which to plug the holes in my knowledge. I sought out the tourist office, picked up a map and signed up for a guided tour.
'Do we have any non-German speakers?' asked Thomas, the softly spoken guide, in crystal clear English.
I sensed my fellow tourists were holding their breaths in the hope that everything wouldn't have to be translated. I raised my hand and a few words of polite disappointment rippled across the group.
'Entschuldigung,' I said, apologetically, causing a minor level of confusion.
Thomas knew his stuff and, as we wandered between the curiosities of the city centre, after each mini speech in German, he turned to me with a hint of linguistic pity and gave me a shortened summary. I limited my questions so as not to further stoke the ire of the others in the group.
The centre of Bremen, sandwiched between the River Weser and a comical zigzag moat, was a mixture of the quite old, the very old and the quite new that looked quite old. Most of it was located within a very short walk of the central Markt. The 600-year-old Rathaus ticked the 'very old' box, with its neighbour – the two-towered Dom – doing likewise for the one marked 'quite old'. The Böttcherstraße was my favourite, however; constructed during the 1920s at the behest of Ludwig Roselius as the home for his Kaffee Hag coffee company, it was a narrow street flanked on either side by ornate brick buildings and made to look as something from a much earlier age.
Roselius wanted to be a Nazi but they didn't let him join the party; his artistic preferences, as displayed in the architecture of the Böttcherstraße, were considered 'degenerate' – so much so that Hitler and his cronies decided to protect the buildings for future generations as a classic example of such heinous art. Thanks, Adolf. A variety of artistic ventures and fine restaurants have now taken up residence and it was all rather pleasant. Between two of the façades, at 12, 3 and 6 p.m., a Glockenspiel banged out a traditional tune. Or rather, it used to do. Following the purchase of the Böttcherstraße by a local bank, the traditional tune was, according to Thomas, that of a TV advert.
The Hanseatic League was mentioned on numerous occasions, but nowhere near as often as the donkey, the dog, the cat and the cockerel. Were they ever out of sight? I doubted it. The animals were the main protagonists in a Bremen-based story by the Brothers Grimm* and were to be found standing one on top of the other in statues, children's puzzles and colourful works of art, as well as filling most of the shelf space in souvenir shops. The image of the small tower of animals has even been adopted as the official symbol of Bremen; although the animals have certainly found their own fame (courtesy of the Grimms), the purveyors of tourist merchandise have been the ones reaping their fortune ever since.
Come Wednesday morning I found the signs for the HH–HB (Hamburg to Bremen) cycle route and started cycling north. Sort of. The area to the north of Bremen was a vast swathe of Lower Saxon farmland and, in its quest to get to Hamburg, the HH–HB route clearly had ambitions of visiting every single farm and field. Although my direction of movement was undeniably towards the north-east, I had the distinct feeling that just as much time was being spent cycling south and west.
The reward for all the toing and froing was the quaint villages and hamlets through which I cycled. It was difficult to imagine how their inhabitants led anything other than a thoroughly enjoyable existence. Decidedly Midsomer, with subtitles but without all the murders. But I couldn't to and fro all day. So, when my lateral movement reached its climax near the town of Zeven in an act of award-winning toing and froing several times along the same stretch of cycle path in search of the next HH–HB sign, I decided to take a more direct route to Harsefeld by following the road instead.
Distance-wise, it had been a good day: 95 km cycled dragged my daily average comfortably above target at 75.5 km. Admittedly, many of these 95 km had not been in a particularly helpful direction but let's not quibble. And when it came to quibbling, the woman running Campingparc Harsefeld was in no mood for that.
'Sprechen Sie Englisch?' I asked politely.
'Nein,' she shouted back. She was rather elderly so I put her volume down to hearing issues rather than disgust at me not being able to speak German.
'Eins, eins, eins,' I explained, pointing first at me, then the bike and then the rolled-up tent.
'Eine Nacht?'
'Ja. Eine Nacht.'
Considering I spoke only a few words of German and she was approaching a state of total deafness, this was going rather well. What's more, it was cheap: €6.50 plus 50 cents for the shower.
'Drei Minuten,' she bellowed before handing me a token.
'Schnell, schnell, schnell!' I responded, referring to the speed that would be required to get washed whilst at the same time trying to inject a little humour into our exchange, but she didn't smile. Did she think I had told her to get a move on?
Instead, she directed her lungs towards her younger sidekick – himself of pensionable age – and shouted instructions. He duly ushered me away to a pitch out of earshot of his boss/mother.
As I packed up the tent on Thursday morning, I was excited: I was nearly halfway to Nordkapp and there was blue sky above me. It had been absent for some time and I was looking forward to cycling again in the sun. As the crow flies, the centre of Hamburg was only 30 km away. Factor in the twists and turns of the HH–HB cycle route, as well as the increasingly urban environment through which I was travelling, and that would certainly increase. At least I would have the sun on my back as I cycled.
Within a couple of hours of setting off, I could see the great cranes of Hamburg in the distance and, if nothing else, they gave me something to aim for. I knew that the port of Hamburg was on the southern side of the Elbe and that the city centre was on the opposite bank. Cycling in the direction of the cranes would have me knocking back a celebratory beer in the centre of Hamburg quicker than a man showering at the campsite in Harsefeld.
Rather than detour to the east of the city to cross the river by bridge, my plan was to make use of the St Pauli Tunnel, which, since 1911, had been linking the docks on the south with the commercial centre on the north. Deep shafts had been dug on either bank of the river and two 400-metre tunnels bored between each shaft. Nowadays, the tunnel was just as much a tourist attraction as a vital piece of urban infrastructure but it was clearly still being used by many Hamburgers to travel to and from work.
It was 12.51 p.m. on Thursday 4 June when I pulled on Reggie's brakes and we ground to a halt in front of the imposing façade of Hamburg's Rathaus. I had cycled halfway to Nordkapp: 3,750 km. Yippee! The realisation was as exciting as it was frightening. I had 3,750 km still to cycle. Yippee? With a bench upon which to sit and a view upon which to feast, I sat, feasted and reflec
ted.
Leaving Tarifa two months previously was starting to become a distant memory. I traced a line in my mind across western and northern Spain, along the coast of France, up the Loire to Paris, onwards to Belgium, then the Netherlands and finally through Germany to the point where I was sitting. Holes were beginning to develop. Where did I sleep on that first night after the youth hostel in Jerez? Had it taken one day or two to cycle from St-JeanPied-de-Port to the coast? Was it Matisse's museum I had visited or Monet's? The string of events, people and places was no longer immediately recollectable, simply because it was now so long – and the memories tied to it were beginning to fall off, as they fought for space amongst all the others. A glance in my diary could answer all my questions. Of course… Dos Hermanas, the place where I had chatted with 'Mercedes day' Paul; just the one day to the coast via the Portakabin tourist office in Bayonne; and it was Matisse, not Monet. The noise of those kids!
I stared at the colourful clock of the Rathaus. It struck 1 p.m. and I wondered what memories I would be looking back upon when (or even if) I arrived at Nordkapp. Whatever they turned out to be, my record keeping – diary, online posts, photographs, etc. – would clearly be essential in supplementing my memory. Without them, I might have to make things up at a later date. A travel writer who makes things up? Surely not…
On a physical level, with potentially 50 per cent of the cycling completed, I seemed to be holding up just fine. It is, perhaps, one of the great misconceptions of long-distance cycling that it must be physically challenging for most of the time. It certainly can be, especially when geography or meteorology is working against you. However, as much time is spent sitting on a saddle doing very little, it's a method of long-distance travel that is usually at the less strenuous end of the spectrum. In addition, the more pedalling that takes place, the more your body gets used to the daily activity and only grumbles on rare occasions. For me the left knee was usually the one to cause trouble and, at times, ache for a few hours, before the pain faded away and it returned to working without complaint. Indeed, it would be fair to say that I had felt more knackered after some of the 'rest' days than I had on most of the cycling ones. Wandering around a city, actively seeking out interesting things to see and do can be utterly exhausting. Pleasurable but knackering nevertheless. My mind, however, could play tricks. When I know that the end of a long journey is nigh, my brain seems to send messages to the limbs, saying: 'Relax… It's nearly over…' When that happens, even the flattest of rides can become torture and in the back of my mind I was expecting the mind games to start somewhere in northern Norway. Time would tell.
—
My English friend Dominic lived in the northern suburbs of Hamburg and that meant that my cycling day was not yet at an end. I remounted the bike, switched on Google Maps and started to follow the directions. Since I had last visited Hamburg some ten years previously, much had changed in Dominic's life. He had got married to his long-term girlfriend Annet, they had moved to the house in the suburbs towards which I was now cycling, he had retrained to work as a secondary school teacher in Germany and had become father to a second child. Leni, his daughter, was ten and I had met her when she was just a baby. Nick was five and, as I approached their front door, he was crying.
On occasions, my departures may have provoked tears (although don't press me for exact details…), but this was a first. I was relieved to hear that I wasn't directly to blame for the upset. So excited was Nick at the prospect of my arrival that he had decided to run around the first floor of the house in frenzied anticipation. When the doorbell rang, he had forgotten that the stairs were in their usual place and promptly fell down them.
The initial plan had been to stay with Dominic and Annet for two nights, Thursday and Friday, but when they offered me a bed for three nights, I struggled to turn them down. I had just completed half of my journey so I deserved a proper break from the cycling. What's more, there was much to do. Reggie needed repairing, I needed reclothing for Scandinavia and the beer in Dominic's cellar wasn't going to drink itself. It would have been rude to say no, so I didn't.
Top priority was Reggie's annoying click, which still hadn't gone away. If anything, it had got worse but I was determined to eradicate it once and for all. Fortunately, the closest bike shop was only a few minutes away from the house so we formed a five-person, ten-wheeled convoy and set off. Upon arrival, Dominic and Annet translated my concerns to the mechanic, Wilhelm, and Reggie was left in his very large and hopefully safe hands overnight. Perhaps where the French had failed, a far-from-chatty German would succeed.
The next 48 hours turned out to be an elongated period of doing nothing, interspersed with short periods of doing something: a perfect combination of recuperation and relaxation without boredom being allowed to rear its ugly head. Later on Friday afternoon we strolled back to see how Wilhelm had got on with the bike.
'I always try to work out what the maximum charge might be so as to avoid heart failure when presented with the bill,' I explained to Dominic, 'and this time I reckon no more than a hundred and twenty-five euros.'
'I'll go for a hundred and fifty euros,' he added rather ominously. He did, after all, have much more experience of getting a bike repaired in Germany.
At the shop, Wilhelm spent much time pointing at (and presumably referring to) the rear hub of the bike. The spokes and rim looked very clean and shiny.
'Has he changed the entire wheel?'
'Yes. He says that's where the clicking was coming from.'
A short test ride outside suggested that the noise had gone so we returned to the counter and I was presented with the bill.
'Quick, ask him to find the defibrillator.'
'How much?' asked Dominic.
'Two hundred and twenty-four euros and seventy-five cents.'
'I'll phone for an ambulance.'
Dominic's stock of beer took a particularly severe dent that evening.
Saturday was spent 'investing' more money: a thick fleece for those chilly Scandinavian evenings, a new pair of heavy-duty trainers to replace the cycling sandals I had been wearing up until that point and a second backup battery pack. Hamburg had prepared me well for life north of the German border; my body would be warm, my feet would stay dry, my phone wouldn't run out of power and, crucially, I was getting used to paying through the nose.
* * *
* The animals are old and destined for the slaughterhouse so they escape to Bremen to find a better future as street musicians. En route they find a house to stay in but it is occupied by thieves. By standing on each other's backs and making a cacophonous noise, they scare off the crooks and take up residence. When the thieves return after dark, they are attacked by the animals but, unable to see what they really are, the villains assume them to be a witch, an ogre, a giant and a judge. The thieves never return and the animals live, as is said, happily ever after... (BACK)
THE NINETEENTH DEGREE (1)
54°–54°50' NORTH
7–10 June
The good news as I cycled through the northern suburbs of the city towards the border with Schleswig-Holstein was that Reggie was being uncharacteristically quiet. There was the purring of a cleaned chain passing smoothly over the rear cogs but nothing else. No clicking. I was once again riding a bicycle that was only making the noises it was designed to make, and that made me a very happy cyclist.
The Vía de la Plata that I had followed in Spain had been built by the Romans, making it about 2,000 years old. Schleswig-Holstein (and Jutland in Denmark) could beat that by some margin with the Ochsenweg, or the 'oxen way', an ancient cattle track. It claimed heritage going back some 6,000 years. That was a lot of resurfacing. Of more relevance here is that the EuroVelo 3 – the route to Trondheim in Norway – chose to follow the Ochsenweg cycle path from Hamburg to northern Jutland. My plan was to cycle along it until Flensburg, the last town in Germany, and then head east across the islands of Denmark to Copenhagen and beyond.
I found my fir
st Ochsenweg cycle path sign in the small town of Langeln. Thereafter, as the route guided me along its angular course down country lanes, across railway tracks and past great wind turbines, I couldn't help but think that the cows of olden times might have adopted a more direct itinerary. It was distinctly reminiscent of following the HH–HB cycle route from Bremen to Hamburg: well signposted, pretty views but far too much faffing about.
After a lengthy cycle approaching 100 km, I arrived at a campsite by a lake near Borgdorf-Seedorf. It had been a chilly day, with a strong wind from the north removing any hint of warmth from the sunlight. As I waited for the campsite reception to open, I looked forward to pitching the tent in the large patch of empty ground beside the water, pulling on my newly purchased thermal jacket, sinking into my camping chair, putting on my slippers and smoking my pipe. Well, some of those things anyway, but it was that kind of evening and that kind of view.
However, it wasn't to be. When the reception opened, I was processed in a manner akin to being admitted to a remand facility. The man was polite but formal and extremely to the point. I was handed half a roll of toilet paper, although no criminal charges were read out and, after paying a deposit for the shower smart card, I was free to go. My allocated pitch had a view of lots of caravans but, alas, no lake.
Spain to Norway on a Bike Called Reggie Page 15
