Matching the month: quite mixed – From Minden (Westphalia) to Bielefeld

Today, I cycled from Minden to the city that doesn’t exist: Bielefeld.

If you are not familiar with the Bielefeld conspiracy, you can look it up on Wikipedia 😉

Apparently, it does exist. Although I didn’t see any city limit signs, so the whole city might be a fake after all 😉

Not a fake is that I (probably) forgot to switch on the app in the morning, so there is only a partial route today: The second part from Bad Oeynhausen to Bielefeld

Download GPX track (Bad Oeynhausen to Bielefeld)

I started in the rain and until Bad Oeynhausen, it rained permanently….yey….but at least there was close to no wind AND the cycle path was top quality. So I raced from my hotel in Minden to Bad Oeynhausen in about an hour 🙂

Good thing of bad weather is that there are close to no people walking around, except for some crazy joggers and the dog walkers (of course 😉 ). Bad thing is that I took only two pictures because everything was packed away to keep it away from the rain.

 

The second part of my trip today was a lot less comfortable than the start:

In Bad Oeynhausen, I left the official Weser Long Distance Cycling path because I wanted to cross over to the Ruhr region. Unfortunately, I didn’t find another „nice“ cycling path and just followed my phone.

From Bad Oeynhausen on, it followed more or less the through road 61 and this route is absolutely not advisable for cyclists: between Bad Oeynhausen and Herford there is no separate cycling path (or cycling lane), so I had to cycle on the road or on the shoulder. Cars speeding by at 70-100 kilometers per hour right next to you just isn’t fun.

The second surprise was that I am now officially out of flat country: there are hills – EVERYWHERE – and I’m just not ready.

And then, in Herford, there were all the shops open and a car event took place with people and cars and kids and food everywhere – and my route was leading right through the city center. Usually, that wouldn’t have bothered me so much but I had promised to check in at 4 pm – and with more possible hills waiting for me, I just wanted to get out. Which I did, eventually.

From Herford to Bielefeld there was again a separate very nice cycling path until my phone sent me up the hills again – probably looking for short-cuts.

Nevertheless, I made it – in time – and even had time for my daily piece of cake. This time I didn’t have time to take a picture because I virtually inhaled it 😀

After a day without internet, I can update the blog again. Monitored by the host’s cat…..(sorry, I forgot the name….)