After Halle we left the Saale and made our way to Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt, located on the Elbe River, southwest of Berlin
I don't know why but I thought Magdeburg would be busy and crazy like Halle or even Berlin but on a smaller scale, it wasn't! As one of Germanys greenest cities it's really clean and calm with no stressful traffic to cycle in. Highlights of the city include the Magdeburg Cathedral, the whimsical Hundertwasser building called the Green citadel, and the Millennium Tower showcasing scientific history. But again, we didn't stay long enough to visit the tower, instead we made our way to the Elbe river and followed its cycle path to Havelburg island, where we camped one last time on the Elbe before leaving the river to head towards Lübeck.
The Elbe cycle route is unquestionably super pretty and surprisingly, for the most part, very quiet with few cyclists.
Heading North toward Wittenberge where many cyclists continue on to Hamberg, the river glides through Brandenburg’s biosphere reserves and protected nature area. The start of the route is very cycle friendly, quite flat, not too straight to be boring, no glaring white gravel, phew! It had plenty of places with tables and benches to stop and sit for a rest or picnic and rather excitingly, it included a very short ferry crossing just before Tangermünde. Tangermünde came towards the end of our tour along the Elbe cycle path and is a red bricked gothic architectural wonder. You can only marvel at how many bricks were baked, glazed and used to build this city, the amount is beyond my imagination, it's just amazing. The old town is a feast of half-timbered and often crooked houses, some of them over 370 years old, with a nearly intact medieval city wall with fortified gates. It's no wonder that it was voted germanys most beautiful small town in 2019.
Although the Elbe cycle path was very nice, there was one hiccup, just as we were getting into our rhythm the cycle path itself was closed for construction and repair work along the dyke wall as a result of structural damage from flooding over the years, this meant another diversion that put us on roads. There is a website about the Elbe that tells you these things, but we only discovered it much later https://www.elbe-cycle-route.com/news-service/current-information-and-news/ Actually, road works and diversions were quite a theme during this whole trip, we had one almost every day.
One of the nicest campsites we stayed at on this trip was Fischer Riedel situatedon this wonderful lake, which had lovely clear water to swim in. The man who ran it, Mr Riedel, was a friendly host . We arrived just as he was heading home to his wife who was either waiting with cake or for him to bring cake (my memory is a bit foggy about that) Even though he was in a hurry he stopped to pour us a beer from his restaurant and have a little chat where he explained the story about his campsite, which is basic with just has a toilet and a little restaurant that is open at weekends. His background is a fishing family, that likes fishing on the lake, his major problem, which made us laugh, are the cormorants that eat the fish, the geese that land and shit, both of which is bad for the lake and bad for fishing, and is why he rolled up early in the next morning to chase them away with loud bangs. Seriously, no joke there were hundreds of geese flying overhead during the evening and in the morning a lot-a lot were on the lake...shitting ha ha ha. There were hardly any guests so it was rwonderfully peaceful and dark with an amazing star filled night sky, Staying there was a family with two children and a big guy with an e-bike and trailer who explained that he'd had a stroke and couldn't work giving him time to cycle between 9 and 20,000 km a year. The total weigh of everything he carries, including himself is over 300kg, we were astounded!
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