2025-03-29 52 12

Location

Participants

Plans

RE8 to Neustadt (Dosse), about an hour the other side of Berlin Hbf. Return train 1h13 later. It's a bit far to walk especially in that time, but it should be easy to bring my bike (which I haven't done since December).

Expedition

I delay in the interest of visiting at official meetup time, though as I do a partial solar eclipse happens above the clouds and I miss a chance for an Eclipse achievement. The Brompton and I board the 2pm-ish RE8 and watch the city pass by and fade away.

It's a fun and fast ride south from the station. I pass a church but don't recognize it from Wikipedia, so no Sightseeing achievement. Brick bike paths, a smooth road, then a path I wasn't counting on - it's newly mapped in OSM, absent from 2023 Street View and Bing imagery. I check out the other end of the path at the next junction, and when I turn around I become aware of a strong north wind that's been helping me along.

The "track" into the woods is blocked and forbids public motor vehicle access; in the distance there's a large pile of logs and a tractor moving around. Riding on the silty surface is difficult. Garmin's OSM-based routing turns me left before the tractor reaches me. At the closest OSM-navigable point I'm still 200 meters away and I can see heavy machinery between me and the point. Google data suggests there's a clear area ahead and another track heading southeast from there. This is accurate, though this track soon turns to deep silt and then ends. I head south on foot, skirt piles of freshly cut logs, and locate the point on top of a small hill at 15:52. Then I wait for 16:00 (or the loggers to come back and kick me out?) and chase a wandering GPS signal.

Back the same way, managing to ride the dirt roads a bit better. Then into the wind and up an incline I also hadn't noticed on the ride out. I nearly stop in the grocery store for a snack, but decide instead to eat the energy bar I should have eaten on Wednesday. I traverse stairs first mistakenly to the same platform I arrived on, then back again to the actual southbound platform. As the return train heads to Berlin, multiple Berlin-Hamburg ICE trains in each direction whiz past. There's a nice sunset to end my journey.