Into the German traffic...

....which frankly seemed odd after the north of Scandinavia where we might not see other vehicles for a while! We left Malmo this morning and crossed the bridge into Denmark then headed south for the ferry to Puttgarden in Germany. The pic below is us waiting for the ferry in about 45 deg heat (well it felt like it) and below that that is us warming up again by sunning ourselves on the deck. Mad dogs and Englishmen!!!

We made good time but there was so much holiday traffic that we didn't get on the next ferry and had to wait for the next. They are every 30 minutes so not too bad but it was baking hot and the vending machine at th terminal only took shrapnel. Fortunately a kind lady changed my 50 Danish note for me and bought some much needed water.

In fact, this was the theme for the day....drinking water. We both think this is the hottest conditions we have ever ridden in. It was unbelieveable and we had every unzipped possible (well almost). We even in the end gave up on wearing gloves which helped a little. We got to Hamburg and thought we had cracked the day and had one more push to Bremen. But oh no...worse was to come. The A1 autobahn is undergoing reconstruction between Hamburg and Bremen. The traffic was grim. We filtered a little but it was tricky due to our wide panniers. Eventually, we gave up and turned off the autobahn and headed across country for Verden am Aller.

I used to live here and figured it would be nice to go back as I hadn't since 1993. Amazingly though I bearly recognised anything. It has changed so much. Eventually I found the hotel which I stayed in when I first moved to Germany although even that had changed beyond recognition. We are going to have a walk aorund this evening and check the place out.

Incidentally, think of dinner, we had a lovely evening in Malmo last night with Arne and Dave. We were edging towards one beer to many when common sense prevailed but it was a gloriously warm evening and dinner was great. Afterwards I took Tim to the Bishops Arms pub for a pint of "Spitfire". That's him enjoying the one after "enough".

So one more day - one last push for Rotterdam. We have already done well over 4000 miles and did 320 miles today in a blast furnace! Time for a beer.