Germany

..so maybe cycling 120 something kilometres on the second day was not the smartest thing to do.

Last nights ride to Germany was tough. As per usual I got slowed down because of uncertain routes. But this time I was also slowed down by my lack of strength. The last 20 km were a real battle. I had to go this far because I got an offer from Couch Surfing (CS). This is my first time using this fabulous thing and so far I really love it! My host has a lot more experience in this, however, this is the first time she hosts someone from CS. She is a wonderful host, has so far went far and beyond of what I ever expected. I arrived late, but she still took me in. She made nice dinner and then we sat there talking about almost everything. It was just great!

There were two main challenges of the day. First, the wind! At some points it was even hard to stay on the road. The second challenge was the distance! It was a bit too much to handle on the second day, and I arrived quite late to Lingen.

The route I took (tried to stay on): Apeldoorn - Twello - Deventer - Bathmen - Holten - Rijssen - Wierden - Almelo - Ootmarsum - Nordhorn (Germany) - Lingen. The last bit, from Nordhorn to Lingen I thought will be a quick journey, but it was a lot longer than I thought. First it was hard to navigate myself in Nordhorn. When I finally found a route to Lingen it said that the distance is 27km. That seemed a lot since I expected it to be somewhere around 15km. This route went along Ems-Vechte-Kanal. It didn't go straight to Lingen, but I got there eventually!

Distance: 130 km
Time: 12h