Day 14: To Mr Meyer’s campsite

August 23, 2022

After Dea and Kevin fell asleep I was lying in the dark tent writing my blog when I heard voices outside. Some men were in conversation as they walked down the forest road so very close to where we were. I put my phone down so there wouldn’t be any light for them to see and the voices carried on down the road without seeming to notice us.

When I told Dea about this in the morning she became worried. “What if it was the Tent Police?” she said. “There might be a ticket outside.”

There was no ticket and I’m pretty sure the Tent Police aren’t even a real thing.

It was nice to wake up in the forest and to hang out there for a bit, but we were planning a 30 kilometre day to get to a “one night tent” garden so we soon hit the road. It felt a bit strange to come out of the forest and be back in civilization again. Once again we were following bike paths next to roads next to fields. After ten kilometres we stopped for our first break at a park in Basdahl.

We had a place to stay in a garden planned for this evening, Tuesday, and a host in Bremen for Thursday, but we were struggling to work out where to go on Wednesday. There was a campsite we could get to but going west to the garden and then back southeast to the campsite seemed like an unnecessarily long route to me. I searched how far it was to the campsite from our current position and it was only 26 kilometres, almost as close as the garden. Going out to the garden and then back seemed silly, so we decided to cancel the garden and just head straight for the campsite which would keep us on a more direct route to Bremen.

The next section of cycling took us through some nice landscapes but the bike paths were in a terrible state. It also seemed to me to be very hilly today, although Dea, who wasn’t pulling the trailer today, didn’t think so. And yet yesterday, when she was pulling the trailer, she thought it was very hilly and I thought it was flat. Funny, that.

Our next break was in a small village where there was no park but there was a cemetery. There was a shaded bit of grass and nobody around and it was fine.

A good place for some stretching exercises too.

From there we had more nice cycling to the campsite. We had pushed it a bit today, 36 kilometres, but Kevin had been happy all day in his trailer. He didn’t even mind waiting patiently as the owner of the campsite, a German farmer named Meyer, showed us first to an exposed patch of grass with no shade at all (it was 4 pm and 31 degrees), and then after seeing our faces, to a much more appropriate location at the far end of the campsite where there were actually some trees.

One of the highlights of this campsite was the canal that run past it at the entrance, and it seemed from the number of people in bathing suits walking around like a good place to swim. So I dragged the family back through the campsite and found a place to get in. Unfortunately the water was rather dirty and not very nice and the bottom was soft and muddy. I tried pushing out into the water so I wouldn’t have to put my feet down, but even in the middle of the canal the water was very shallow and I could feel the bottom beneath me. I breaststroked along for a minute or two anyway, then clambered back out again. A couple of years ago I signed up to swim the English Channel, but I bailed out of it when Dea got pregnant and my priorities changed. Had I gone through with it, my swim would have probably been taking place today, or one day this week. This dip in this shallow, dirty canal was symbolic then, of something. I’m not sure what.

Had I gone through with the Channel swim, of course, we wouldn’t be having this adventure together as a family. So I felt glad that my priorities had changed. Now my adventures were taking place through Kevin’s eyes. I could see him watching me as I breaststroked past, his little head turning to see me float by. And he was similarly interested in watching the sheep that live in a field behind the campsite. I held him up and he watched them and it was the first time he had ever seen sheep. And I don’t know if you can imagine what it’s like to have never seen sheep before and to then see sheep. But I imagine it must be quite the adventure, and he is getting experiences like that every day, and I think that is something very special indeed.

Today's ride: 36 km (22 miles)
Total: 552 km (343 miles)

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