The strange little Pension that I stayed in had interesting room keys. They were transponders that when pressed rendered the lock usable. Last night, I struggled a bit with the main door but eventually it worked. With nobody around I started to think how the hell I was going to get in.
I had a breakfast of muesli, yoghurt and fruit in the room and felt ready to start the day. I had a couple of options for the route today. Either go directly to the river, the Oder, and follow the snaking bike path north or go more directly north and save 10kms. It was overcast and cool, so I decided on the shortcut. I’d see plenty of the river over the next few days.
It was the right decision as a perfect bike path appeared as I was leaving the city limits and took me all the way to Frankfurt am Oder. This was a much bigger town than I expected, and I walked through the busy markets and sat down for a coffee.
I’d loaded up with food, the night before at the supermarket as things close by lunchtime on Saturday. I seem to be more worried about food than lodgings these days, and even more concerned about where the daily caffeine will come from.
Around lunchtime, I found a bench in the shade with some nice views but lots of insects. They didn’t like the Decathlon insect spray (yep, that’s where I got it) and I had my cheese rolls in relative peace.
I was feeling quite lazy at this point so I found a campsite around the 60km mark which was right on the bike path. It was a pretty easy ride to that point until a storm arrived with 2km to go. That was the order of the afternoon as storms kept rolling in until 7pm.
The campground was wonderful. The clientele were fishermen, cyclists and one or two campervan types. It had an outdoor area with tables and bench seats and served local fish. I had a fillet of smoked salmon – smoked on site. It was great, and so were the people there.
Another cyclist, Detlef arrived and we both sat and ate and waited for the rain to stop before putting out tents up. He’s a great guy – aren’t all cyclists ? He’s going to Poland to one of the sister cities of his hometown as some kind of celebration or anniversary.
Finally the storms stopped coming and I put up my tent, got organised and went to bed just as the mozzies arrived.