5th September 2016. Neukloster, Germany.

It was supposed to be lovely weather today but we weren’t convinced, the sky was a little overcast.  Nevertheless we’d decided to cycle into town to see whether we could catch the Tourist Information Office before it closed and then cycle round the large lake.  We raced into town but the Office was closed, we thought we’d arrived 20 minutes before it was due to close and if it had been Tuesday instead of Monday that would have been the case.  It seems it’s closed all day on Monday.  Oh well!

Instead we went and had coffee and cake in a bakery and THEN cycled round the lake.  I took the opportunity to photograph the sculptures in the town square (I’d had plenty of opportunities on other days when the town square was empty but didn’t bother doing it then, hey ho!).

We discovered lots of very old buildings on our way to the lake and a huge church which must be the one we’ve heard ringing its bells.

We uuumed and aaaahed about whether to cycle the 9.4 km round the lake in case it started raining but we’re always being told that a little rain never hurt anyone so we took a chance.  It was a lovely cycle ride although the views of the lake were few and far between!

We cycled through various types of woodland and through sand, that was hard going!

We stopped by a bridge to get a teeny glimpse of the lake and almost ran over two tiny toads that were walking through the grass.

Two dragonflies took a liking to Darren’s bike and landed on it.

Two thirds of the way round the lake the track went through the reeds and amongst willow trees which were hanging over the muddy trail.  As an added bonus we then we had to lift the bikes over a fallen tree.

We assumed we were almost back to civilisation when we suddenly came to a warning tape which was strung across the path saying “Verboten”.

I was not looking forward to going back through the mud and lugging the bikes back over the fallen tree especially as Darren looked at his GPS and it showed a road not much further on and the road behind us was a couple of kilometres away.  Darren decided he was going through regardless.  I’ve never cycled so fast in all my life, as we’d heard gun shots at the weekend I’d made up my mind that the path was closed because they were hunting.

We got to the ‘road’ quickly and there was nothing at all at that end mentioning that the track was closed so we opted to stay on it.

I can never say life is boring when I’m with my husband.

We got as far as the bathing beach, which was very near our stellplätze when I remembered the main reason we’d gone into town this morning was to buy coffee and I certainly was NOT going back to the van without it so off we went back into town, bought loads of things as well as the coffee and found a nice shortcut which bypassed the main road back to the site.

 

https://www.stadt-neukloster.de/portal/startseite.html