Marschacht

The Worst and Best of Times
To steal a phrase from the immortal Charles Dickens “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. That sums up the last 24 hours pretty accurately.

Late yesterday afternoon I received the sort of news that no group leader ever wants to hear. One of our group participants – Sue Rose, had suffered a bad fall while exploring Hamburg and had been taken to the emergency hospital by ambulance. Further examination and Xrays showed the she had broken the neck of her femur and would require emergency surgery to repair the break.

In one moment it meant that her dream of riding the Elbe had been snatched away,

This was devastating news for Sue, but also for the entire group. After looking forward to the trip for the past year, it was hard to believe that she would not even get to turn the pedals even once.

This morning the remaining 20 riders checked out of the hotel and met the representatives of Ruckenwind who will be handling the logistics of our mammoth ride. To our rlief the staff were very professional and, when we received the bikes, all agreed that there would be no complaints in that regard. The bikes were brand new quality bikes from Velo de Ville.

After a protracted time setting the bikes up, packing panniers, etc, we finally got underway at about 10.30am. The first challenge was to navigate out of a major city, safely and without losing any more of our team members.

After about 30 minutes we finally reached the banks of the Elbe, the mighty river that is to form the theme of most of our ride. We were accompanied by several members of the Ruckenwind team, who made sure that we would be pointed in the right direction, Somewhat confusingly we never followed the track that we had all been given for the first day of the ride. This meant that GPS units were continuously beeping as they had to recalculate the route.

Following the obligatory group photo shoot, we continued under a hot and cloudless sky. Our destination for the first day was Lauenburg, but it stubbornly refused to get any closer.

We eventually bounced our way the final km to the hotel over a very uneven cobblestoned road. It had been a challenging first day, but everything feels better after a shower and a good meal.

No one will have trouble sleeping tonight, that is for sure.

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