Day 5: Werlte - Bremen

102k. Halfway stop now in Bremen and having been rural for a few days it was good to roll into a city. After a great nights sleep in an old hotel in Werlte with lots of opening windows, we quickly got into farmland again. The farms became bigger and do more isolated; we passed through a few quiet towns, but few villages.

No rural bike tour is complete without a dog incident and passing a large farm with nobody around we had a classic of the genre. Suddenly a large dog bounded out ferociously barking and showing its teeth. Goodness knows what breed, but this is a land of big dogs and this one seemed more than a cute pet… he or she was on a mission. In a split second, all the usual advice like you can’t out sprint them, avoid eye contact, stop and keep your bike between you and the mutt and crucially, defend your wife, went out the window. Without thinking I changed gear and sprinted like hell, so the mutt headed for Caroline who screamed hard. She just got away before the huge teeth sank into her left calf… Who knows if it was just fending us off or the blood-curdling scream did the job? Not me, I was 500m up the road by then!

Again the surfaces varied from a grassy lane with an alleged paved surface under it, to bumpy asphalt, bumpy block pavers to smooth Dutch standard asphalt - to be honest much more of the latter today.

Bremen was interesting cycling through and we’ll have time to have a proper look on our rest day tomorrow.Read more