Germany has some big rivers which are very popular with cyclists. We’ve cycled the Rhine and parts of the Mosel but the Elbe is much less popular and more remote so we decided to try that next.
It’s another huge river with commercial traffic even though we didn’t see any, but it has cycle paths adjacent to it.
It’s flat, picturesque and quiet. The river meanders like a river should, winding back and forth untamed by humans and has beaches and mud flats. For most of it you are entirely on your own, with no other cyclists and just the noise of your tyres on the path and the birds chirping away and often no sign of civilisation in sight. It’s gorgeous and one of our all time favourite river cycles.
The weather had decided that as it was August it really was about time summer arrived and we had some glorious sunshine, gentle winds and quaint little towns to enjoy it in.
We still haven’t camped (anyone want to buy a tent?) and have stayed in some lovely small towns which have survived both the war, the East German government and nutty modern architects.
The Elbe in places was the border between East and West Germany in Iron curtain days and as 15% of East Germans legged it to the west, the East decided to fortify the border to keep Western spies out (!).
This involved lots of guard posts, mine fields barbed wire and a 5km exclusion zone. Some of the villages were levelled and some abandoned and it’s these abandoned ones that have now been restored amazingly.
Oddly it’s not touristy and apart from a few cycle tourers we are the only tourists at the ice cream stops! We’ve loved these towns and how peaceful and beautiful they all are. They are lived in with people doing their daily shop, others chatting in the street and all of them looking at us and thinking ‘Shes not pedalling on the back’.
In places the old border has been left or reconstructed and I can remember crossing into East Germany with my mum and dad in our Bedford Dormobile in 1972. I remember the guards looking at the west with their binoculars and the soldiers patrolling, the guards on bridges and the general drabness of the place. I remember seeing the barbed wire fences weaving their way across the landscape and the regular towers too. It was quite an exciting adventure then and was probably the trip that got me hooked on travelling too, despite being 10 and wanting to stay at home and play cricket with my friends ‘up the field’. So it’s my parents fault not mine….
We reached the end of our Elbe mini tour at Magdeburg where we had 2 days off. Magdeburg was another East German (DDR) city that was devasted in the war. The DDR then leveled large areas of the city to make huge boulevards and erect Stalinist architecture, which was cheap and quick.
In other eastern European countries we’ve often thought this ghastly, as it’s usually poorly maintained and in places looks almost derelict. But Magdeburg has spent lots of money on restoring some of the old buildings, renovating the Stalinist stuff and making the city a warm welcoming place with lost of parks, space, cobbled streets and loads of cafes. We liked it.
But climate change, having had enough of cold wet windy weather and pleasant sunshine decided we all needed some serious heat and of course this coincided with our next cycle which was to be 90km into the Harz mountains, which meant uphill all day. hills & heat?…
Bugger that, you know us ..so we hopped on the train instead …
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