Wanderung 30

We said good bye to the motorcycle drivers who were going on to a rally of old motorcycles. Bob looked wistfully at the bikes, but it was time to go, we had a long day ahead of us. Our main goal for the last day of our bike tour was to get back to Hamburg where we had a hotel room reserved for the night. Our B&B had a great breakfast , which turned out to be necessary as we had a long, cold, and occasionally rainy ride down past Maribo to the ferry port of Rodbyhavn. We had also planned out a longer, more scenic route around the lakes just South of Maribo, but given the adverse conditions we decided on the shortest and quickest route down to the ferry, which unfortunately led us along a moderately busy 2-lane highway.

For the most part we rode on a narrow paved shoulder, but when we had to ride in the car lane, the Danish drivers were still very good about giving us at least half a lane when they could move over safely. Still, the gusting wind knocked us about quite a bit and the rain got onto our glasses and made it hard to see. As Monika said, if this had been our first day on the trip, we would probably have given up on the whole idea and turned back to Hamburg! We drove again through Rodby with its colorful entrance and knew we were getting close to the ferry terminal.

We stopped off a an Aldi store in Maribo to purchase some sandwiches for lunch as we knew it would take all day to work our way back to Hamburg and we had basically run out of groceries. Despite the poor conditions, we made good time with the help of our electric motors and reached Rodbyhavn just before noon, which was a little over two hours. But the ferries were full of Germans returning from car trips to Denmark, so we had to wait over an hour to embark on the 1:00 pm ferry to Putgarten. It rained while we were waiting but a kind German couple from Luebeck took pity on us and invited us to take shelter in their back seat during the showers. Curiously, the ferry was 11.50 Euro for two persons and two bicycles rather than the 12.00 Euro it had cost us just two weeks earlier, which made it even more of a bargain.

After we boarded the ferry and secured our bikes, we found the same couple in an upstairs lounge and sat down with them and chatted while we had our midday sandwiches during the 40 minute crossing. Once back on German soil, we worked our way around through the exit and over to the nearby strain station. Buying the Schleswig-Holstein day ticket, I was surprised that each bicycle was now an extra 5 Euro rather then the 4 Euro for my bike that I had paid on the trip from Hamburg to Haffkrug, so both the ferry and the train had changed prices in just two weeks!

The ICE high-speed express trains do not carry bicycles, so we had to wait for the small regional train that made all the local stops. Paying 5 Euro extra for each bike was really a fair price, however, because even putting our bikes right beside each other, they took up the space of four folding seats that could have otherwise been occupied by humans. We sat in the compartment with our bikes to keep an eye on them, but many other bikers locked their bikes to the side rail and went upstairs to the more comfortable seats. Curiously, I later found out the "fast" ebikes that are capable of 45 kph and classified as mopeds, are NOT allowed on trains or buses, which limitation would have made our kind of bike tour impossible.

One advantage of taking the train back to Hamburg is that we didn't have to cross the scary "Coat hanger" bridge between the island of Fehmarn and mainland Germany. As it was still quite windy with scattered showers , I was glad to give that a pass on our way back! Instead we went smoothly up and over the bridge , getting panoramic views of the coast on either side of the strait in the process.

As we passed by the now familiar towns on the Baltic Coast, we saw that the rapeseed plants were already losing the bright yellow blossoms we had so enjoyed on our way up to Denmark. But the sailing season was now underway and we could see sailboats out on the water when the tracks were near the coastline.

In Luebeck we changed to the regional train to Hamburg , and then at Hamburg Hauptbahnhoff we had a quick dinner--a Frikadelle with mustard for Monika and a big bowl of split pea soup with cut up pieces of hot dog for me--Yum! After dinner we boarded the S1 to get out to Ohlsdorf and finally arrived at our hotel shortly after 7 pm, utterly exhausted but safely back after a great bicycle tour of Denmark !