11.05.25 Day 5 - Wohlenbeck-Hartenholm. Crossing Elbe and staying with Warmshowers hosts

Request to all: feel free to give comments, criticism or questions!

Another beautiful day! Starting early from Wohlenbeck, crossing the Elbe with a ferry and staying with Michael and Gabi in Hartenholm as a Warmshowers guest.

 After a little more than one hour I reached Wischhafen. Here is a ferry over the Elbe, the only crossing point east of Hamburg.

On the ferry

Actualley, there are four ferries

Crossing the Elbe feels like the first milestone of the trip. The next is the Polish border.

Then passing through the nice small town Glückstad (coffee+) and moving on through large areas with agriculture and small villages.

Again strugling with bad roads/paths on Google's proposals. I guess the reason is that these are marked as bike paths, but there is no indication about pavement. You can also select the car alternative, but that means the autobahn 😀.

Tonight I stay with Michael and Gabi as a Warmshowers guest. Highly appreciated! Warmshower hosts provide, well a warm shower, and also a place to sleep and very often meals. Anbjørg and I also host a few guests during the summer, if we are home (which is not so often).

A few words about my bike. For several years I used my Norwegian Nakamura 6.0. It has performed well. The only thing I disliked is that it is difficult to attach the front bags well to the carbon fork. I had a solution made by a bike shop in Tromsø (see my blog from my Nordkapp trip), but the bags were hanging quite low, it was not really satisfactory. And in general I wanted a more solid bike for long trips. So last year I bought a Decathlon Riverside Touring 900, see picture. I am not advertising (and I'm not getting paid), I won't say it is better than other bikes, but it has worked well for me so far.

I only exchanged the seat with another Brooks seat that has worked well for me for a couple of years. The seat on the picture is also Brooks, but I preferred a seat I had tried before.

A nice detail: you can charge your phone while riding. Not very much, but you can use GPS on a long trip. Battery still goes down a bit, but you have plenty. If you switch off everything, it charges a few percent per hour.

USB connection on the handlebar

Statistics:

85km, total time 7:45, active time 5:15.

Total 504km.