Day 1 – The Marathon
Surprisingly the first real Travel day wasn’t as bad as I feared. We disembarked at around 7am swedish time and after that I headed straight southward. Well, in Stockholm I wanted to be a know-it-all and overruled the GPS, bat that was fixed quickly.
Sweden was its usual boooring self, and while I recognized some landmarks here and there, I never felt tempted to stay a bit longer. Looks too much like Finland I guess (Sorry to all my Swedish friends, if I have any? Don’t hurt me!) But not, of course, the Öresund bridge. This time I had two cameras with me when I crossed it. Let’s see what footage I can get out of that after my return.
The stretch from Kopenhagen to Rødby was really a stretch after all. Especially since my gas-hand started to hurt, but more to that later. When I arrived at the ferry terminal I looked forward to having another hour or so of a break and not driving. Schedule wise everything was still fine, I arrived in time for the 5:45pm ferry, and that one was delayed in any case.
When I arrived in Puttgarden I was actually rather relaxed after the roughly 90 minute rest, so I decided to head for my “Best case target” in Bremen. And lo and behold, it all worked out fine. I arrived half past nine, they still had rooms, and nearby where a nice park and a KFC, what else could I wish for? 😀
One word on the weather. So far it has been wonderful. No rain, mostly sunny, sometimes a bit hot. But overall perfect riding conditions. I just hope this holds when I arrive in Newcastle on Saturday. Oh wait! One exception! When on the final stretch between Hamburg and Bremen, there was one persistent rain cloud. It actually followed me for, like, 10 or 15km and dumped not only rain but also, of course, hail on me. It paced me with a steady 60 to 80 kph for 10 minutes. How I know that so exactly? Because I was in a construction site, having that exact speed, doh!
Here is the Ride through hell how Google shows it, 1088km (detours not included):
Finally a couple of pictures from the ride.
