Splendid isolation

Today we were following one of the many bike routes here. This one called the "town tour" links the towns on the lakes: Eutin Malente, Grebin, Plön in a round trip.

The first half went north and anticlockwise from Eutin along the shore of Lake Eutin. The tracks are a mixture of gravel and sand and okay for cycling as long as it's not raining.

There are a couple of short climbs if the track can't follow the shore precisely, or crossing between lakes,but they're not too bad. But from Malente the track goes north and uphill for a few hundred metres. Not too bad, but not quite what we were expecting and not mentioned in the guide.

But once we were at the top it was flattish it downhill to Plön. Just a pity about the last few kilometres next to the main road into Plön.

The way back promised to be shorter but also less hilly except for one longish climb away from Lake Diek. And it was beautiful in the woods until we got to the climb.

I'd already started on could clearly see Astrid below me on the hairpin bend, so I thought she'd see me.

She didn't but carried along the path by the lake towards Malente.

I stopped a little up the climb, double checked the map and called her. To me it was clear that we had to go this way and it wasn't clear that the track she was on actually went somewhere. Mindful of what happened last year near Briare, I asked her to come back and said I would walk back to meet her.

The track was unfortunately quite sandy and not great to ride. Pushing a bike uphill is never fun but at least we had no luggage. But it was also a hill too far for Astrid who was feeling the ride more than me.

We did make it to the top, the track did improve, and apart from Astrid's chain coming off, the rest of the trip was uneventful and included a patch next to the smaller of the two lakes in Eutin.

My navigation app is great, and it contains all kinds of details, including gradients and the quality of the roads, but sometimes it's too much detail and it can be hard to choose this way or that.

We probably would have been able to find our way to Malente and from there back to Eutin. We would have had to climb, but would probably have been on or a road or paved cycle path. Astrid has great reserves of determination but I'll have to try harder in the coming days, though I hope that the closer we are to the coast, the flatter it will be.