Day 39 in Deuchland

It is 39 days since I started the trip and 34 of which have been cycling days and so far I have done 1626.12 miles. I am taking a day off in the town of Itezhoe - a town of 27,000 people just north of the river Elbe and north west of Hamburg. My cycling companion, Jürgen, has a friend, called, Stefan here and we are staying at his place.
Since leaving Gothenburg on 12 June, I have travelled south to Varberg. There I left Sweden on a ferry and arrived at Grenna in Denmark.

I headed for the northernmost point on Denmark at Skagen, travelling along the great cycle paths provided in Denmark, through some lush countryside and beautiful coastal areas. At Skagen the Baltic and the North Sea meet. It was the home to the celebrated painter PS Kroyer and it was here that  I met up with Jürgen again. I had travelled with him for 4 days in Norway. Another German guy told us about the shelters provided for people travelling in nature in Denmark. We took a copy of his map and headed south. We used three shelters and also camped wild a couple of times as well as using camp sites. At one of the wild camps in a forest, I woke up to find that one of my food panniers had gone missing in the night. It was on the outside of the tent but less than a foot from my head. An animal had taken what was a heavy bag away into the bush and had got the food out. We tracked the bag down, luckily there wasn´t any damage done!  Again, the cycle routes were great. There are no big cities along the west coast until you get to Esjberg, so we were mostly on car free cycle routes. After two weeks travelling in Denmark we crossed the border into Germany. From the southern part of Denmark onwards into Germany, the scenery changed completley. We have been following dykes all along the coast. The scenery is open and spectacular. There are many islands along this coast from Romo onwards. Alot of the land had been claimed from the sea by the building of dykes. We have been cycling by the Wadden Sea and the Hallig islands for the last few days, getting ever closer to the Elbe.
Yesterday I got my second really thorough soaking. After the initial heat wave in Norway, the weather has been mostly cold, with some strong winds and of course plenty of rain on occassions. I am dried out again now, ready for the next phase of the journey tomorrow