Wanderung 30

We have perfected what I like to call "Two-iPad planning" for arranging our trips on the fly. That is:
On my iPad, I have the Komoot bicycle-trip app open in "planning" mode, with our current position set as the starting point. At the same time, Monika has the Bookings.com app open on her iPad. I plan a route to the central point like the train station in a city that is generally in the right direction we want to travel and at roughly the right distance. If the Komoot bicycle route is too far, I revise the destination to a closer city and replan, and if it is not far enough I choose a more distant city and replan. When I have a city at approximately the right distance, I give Monika the city name and she starts checking Bookings.com for any hotels or B&Bs near it.

She selects only the ones that have en suite rooms with good customer reviews, and then she gives me the address of the best one as a candidate for our next overnight stop. I change the destination address in the Komoot app to be that exact address and replan the route, checking on the total distance and type of road surface of that route. If Monika doesn't like the distance or the road surface we would be riding on, she selects the next best candidate for the next night's stop and gives me that address.

We keep changing the chosen destination and route until we find a place to stay that is (a) at a good price with (b) good reviews in a (c) good location with a (d) good bicycle route to it. Then Monika makes the reservation and I "save" the exact door-to-door route on the Komoot server. Then we each download a copy of that route onto our iPads for use whilst riding the next day. The huge advantage of this "Two iPad" method is that we can easily adjust price, distance, route difficulty, and exact location for each night's stay. During our daily ride, we have exact GPS guidance from the moment we ride off in the morning to the moment we arrive at the doorstep of our next hotel or B&B that afternoon! No more fiddling with maps to figure out where you are, or getting lost and having to backtrack, which is really frustrating!

The ride from Haderslev to Kolding that day was only 27 km and we thought it would be a piece of cake. But we had not figured on having headwinds, rainstorms, and the occasional section of dirt and gravel road to contend with! We both used the higher levels of support from our electric motors and correspondingly depleted the bicycle batteries more than on previous days. (Interestingly, although we worried about battery life, the batteries on our bicycles never ran out of power on any of our daily rides.)

But despite the difficulties, there were still those sublime moments of bliss when the sun was shining from a bright blue sky on an impossibly beautiful Danish landscape, something I would roughly describe as "postcard perfect". Much of the landscape was pastures and dairy farms, and some farms were growing crops. Most of the crops had just been harvested and plowed under, and occassionally we could tell by the smell that the field had just been fertilized!

At one point I stopped to take a picture of a pretty brick schoolhouse out in the countryside, when I suddenly noticed a pure white church sticking up into the deep blue sky just to the left of the school, and THEN I noticed a gorgeous little thatched-roof cottage just to,the left of the church. I mean, how many places in the world can you just stand in one spot and take three nice pictures of three beautiful things simply by turning on your heels?

But we also kept hitting rainstorms almost like clockwork every half an hour, which was a pain in the neck as the sheets of rain blowing almost horizontally In the strong wind gusts forced us to seek shelter immediately. Often we hid in the lee side of hedges or trees, and I was very grateful that these storms did not include lightening as being caught by a lightning storm out in the open is one of my least favorite things!

The fourth time a rainstorm marched down upon us, we were approaching a gas station that sold hot dogs, sodas, and convenience-store type food, and we decided to simply stop and have lunch while waiting out the storm. Fortunately the store had exactly 2 chairs at a small, stainless steel table, where we could sit and munch our food. Monika had a bratwurst and I had two "Frikadellen" (German hamburger with no bun) covered in mustard while we watched the storm rage outside, snug and cozy. By the time we were done with our meal, the storm had blown itself out and we could continue the last kilometer or so to our B&B, where we parked our bikes in a garage next to an old Miata MX-5 and signed in at the big house--I have the same model of Miata at home and was somehow surprised to find one sitting in a barn in Denmark.

Our room was in one of the buildings around the central square of the farm, possibly an old stable or carriage house, but beautifully converted to roomettes with kitchen and living areas as well as two twin beds.

The owners were a quite friendly couple, who encouraged us to pick apples from the adjacent orchards area and even dig up potatoes from their big garden. We had some of the apples for a snack, and cooked the tiny "new" potatoes with our soup for dinner, and it was all delicious.