I took my Brompton to Hamburg on the train, unfolded the bike, and cycled to Poland – PART 3

The Brompton is so brilliant for combining cycle touring with public transport. I love how I can just pack my tent and stove, hop on a train, arrive, unfold, and pedal away. It’s a wonderful freedom, and so simple.

On this bikepacking adventure, I used my Brompton folding bike and little Hilleberg tent, and I cycled and camped across the former East Germany to Poland. My idea was to see part of Europe I knew nothing about. Basically, I needed to go to to Sweden, and I thought it would be nice to do a part of the journey by bike. The journey was super interesting, and I found it really moving actually. From Poland, I took the ferry across the Baltic to my husband’s place in Sweden.

Here’s the third episode! Hope you are enjoying the series! Thank you for watching!

Music – courtesy of Epidemic Sound
Johannes Bornlöf / When in Doubt

In spring, I wanted to go somewhere new on the 
way to my husband’s place in Sweden. I took the train to Hamburg and then unfolded 
my Brompton and headed for Poland from where I could take a ferry across to 
Sweden. So far, it had been a bit wet. I planned the journey would take a week and I’d 
ride 500 km. I found it super interesting to cycle through the former East Germany. Today I hoped 
to camp at the border with Pomerania and I did. Although, as you’ll see, things didn’t quite go as 
I expected. I had hoped to do the whole trip using one power bank and my solar panel, but the solar 
panel had not been any use because of the weather. And my power bank was now down to almost zero. 
So, I had stayed in a guest house to recharge. As I rode away, I was feeling thoughtful. So, 
this is Sunday morning, day five. It’s going really quickly or I don’t know. Or is it slow? 
It’s hard to say. I’m in a different world here. It’s nice. Obviously, it’s really nice 
staying in a guest house. But actually, I think I honestly prefer the tent. I just 
love having my own environment. I mean, last night was absolutely fine, but there were like 
it was Saturday night. There were people kind of talking and laughing really loudly. I couldn’t 
sleep. Of course, it’s not silent in a tent, but it’s different. It’s kind of natural 
noises, so to speak. And I just find that much more peaceful than having people kind of 
really close around me. So, yeah. Plus, you’ve got all your stuff. So if you want a cup of tea, 
you just boil some water and have a cup of tea. And German guest houses, they don’t have kettles. 
At least that one didn’t. So I just thought, oh, I’ll have water. I probably could have asked 
them, but um I didn’t. So anyway, gorgeous day. It’s so lovely I don’t want Lohnen, but it’s lucky. 
You just get that here. They just go cross. We’re going straight and then next right. Thank goodness. It seems kind of odd to have horses 
running wild on the road. The fence is down maybe. They’re supposed to be in the field, 
all of them. I felt bad about it, but I rode on leaving the horses and 
now I was looking for a left turn. So now I had got a cross in my direction. But 
you never know whether signs like this mean a road is impassible completely, like because 
a bridge across a river is down or something, which has happened to me, or whether it’s just 
impassible for cars and you can get through if you’re on a bike. A diversion can use up a 
lot of time and energy and sometimes put you on main roads which you obviously don’t want 
to do. And if you decide to just try it and ride to the blockage and then find you 
are stuck, you’ve got a ride back too. So I hoped for the best and headed 
down the closed road. Okay, brilliant. I was scared then. I was scared 
then. I think this should work. Sure I’ll manage somehow… Not really in the right gear… Yes. Yes. Oh, we’re in Bellin now. Brilliant. On the map, Bellin was marked as having a manor 
house. I had seen quite a few manor houses so far in Mecklenburg which is known for having 
been a landscape of big, landed estate, kind of National Trust-type places everywhere. 
Most of the manor houses I had seen had been quite small but Bellin seemed to be on a 
much grander scale. The owner in the 1600s was an Italian doctor who’d become physician to 
the Duke of Mecklenburg and his descendants built this in the 1700s which is actually just 
a gatehouse. 200 years later a businessman from Hamburg bought the estate and he built 
this which is sort of a mini Buckingham Palace. Gosh, lovely. And weirdly, I found out that in the 1980s, the 
communist East German government used this manor house to house 300 Namibian refugee children who 
were brought up here and trained to be leaders of a hoped-for future Namibian communist state. 
The Cold War brought such strange changes to people’s lives. The children did German school 
lessons and were taught how to handle rifles. Not so keen on these cobblestones. It’s not very far. Thank goodness. Right. Yes, that was that. So I was riding into 
the area called ‘Mecklenburg’s Switzerland’, which doesn’t mean that it’s got the Matterhorn 
or anything, but basically people in the 1800s called areas that they thought were 
romantically scenic little Switzerlands, and this is one of those. So it would be 
romantic with a capital R, and I was really looking forward to see it. Actually, first off, 
it was the motorway that struck me as romantic. Berlin! Oh, I just love it when you get signs like 
that. It’s so romantic. Feel like you’re travelling long distances, which 
you are. It’s such a nice feeling. If this was Denmark, there 
would definitely be water. I’m at a church, so let’s go and see if in 
Germany they do have water. I think they will. There are flowers, so people will be watering 
the flowers, right? When I’m on a trip like this, water is a thing I have to find along the 
way. I actually take pretty much all my food for the whole week with me to make it easy 
and efficient. But of course, water I have to pick up as I go along. In each country, 
I have to work out the best way to do this. Yes! A tap! Brilliant. It’s so quiet. It’s just absolutely lovely. I 
thought these roads might be quite big. You know, this is an orange road, so I interpret 
that as a B road. It’s Sunday. Maybe that helps. Certainly, I imagine 
that helps. It’s just gorgeous. Just so lovely! Empty roads , easy 
navigation, easy hills just roll up, roll down. Lovely weather, smooth 
road surface. It’s just fantastic. Hello I came to the town of Teterow, which I thought 
was lovely. It was developed into a market town by Saxon settlers in early medieval times. And 
they built a town wall, which I think has gone. It’s beautiful. And town gates 
of which two are still standing. It’s just amazing. And there’s noone here So I passed through the second old 
town gate and left Teterow heading east. Well, goodbye Teterow. What a brilliant 
place. And then I saw this tower and I rode across a strange kind of blank 
square, like a housing estate to go and look at it. And then I found another 
piece of an old building just across. Maybe that was the old manor house. What I 
discovered later was that these bits were part of what had been a huge palace of the Duke 
of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and his Russian wife who was niece of the Tsar. And it was gigantic. Schumann and 
Tchaikovsky had performed here and all sorts. But one night in 1940, the palace was burned to 
the ground and people said it was a chimney fire, but it was probably an arson attack by 
local members of the Nazi party because the Duke was disliked by the Nazi leadership. 
And the true cause is impossible to prove. The Duke was actually later arrested by the 
Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp. I came to the town of Malchin, which 
was my last town in Mecklenburg before crossing into Pomerania. Apparently, a lot 
of the town was destroyed in World War II, but the medieval town gates survive 
and a huge gothic church. Wow. massive. It’s actually really warm in the sun. So, I’m 
sitting here in the in the shade. Oh so nice. So Malchin is here and now I would be leaving 
Mecklenburg and entering the old duchy of Pomerania. I only had 15-20 km left to do. So I 
dawdled over the low hills in the evening sun. It smells so sweet. And now I could see the lake 
by which I was planning to camp Now I can smell the oil seed grain flowers. There are just dozens 
of these, aren’t there I don’t like arriving at the place where I’m 
hoping to camp hungry because when I’m hungry, I don’t enjoy myself and also because I get 
low on resilience and patience and I rush things and make mistakes. So, as usual, I had 
a bag of nuts as a late afternoon snack. You never know what will happen when you’re getting to
the end of the day. And as you’ll see today, I was really glad I had topped up on energy. 
So, this is the campsite. I haven’t booked. I haven’t written. I’m just hoping it works out. I 
had checked the seasonal opening dates of all the campsites I was going to use online, and some 
of them I’d rung or written. But not this one. It was odd that there were no people 
in all these caravans and no tents. There were just a few dog walkers and 
people with prams, but I wasn’t too worried. Okay. No tents in sight, but they I just looked on 
their website and they have prices for tents. So the question is where to go. Then I 
realised why there was no one there. Oh, so there’s water from next week. 
There was no water. Oh dear. Deserted. I really need water. 
The shower block is locked. Look at this. This is not going to work, is it? There’s no water. Shit How to get water here then? I didn’t expect that problem. Oh dear That’s the shower block all locked up. 
Just asked some people who were driving over there and they said there’s a hotel up 
here. So, let’s see if I can get some water. This absolutely doesn’t look promising at all. No. Okay. Nothing here. I wondered if there was maybe 
an outside tap somewhere, But no, there wasn’t. Basically this hasn’t worked. Um, okay. What should we do? The good thing is it’s only 5:30 or something. 
So, um, yeah. So, I realised I was going to have to camp wild, suddenly. Okay. So, I think 
I’ll just drop this whole idea. It’s a pity. So, I think I’ll just carry on and see if I 
can get some water, at a church or something. Nothing for miles. Do you think that’s a church? Possibly. There were no graves and no flowers 
here, so it was not looking good. There were no graves which is 
kind of worrying. Suddenly I saw there were people in the garden of this house. Hello. So, that’s 4 litres of water. So, that’s that 
problem solved. That really nice young man gave me the water. So, now I’m just going 
to look on the map and see where might be a good kind of area to aim for. When I 
camp wild, I don’t want to be seen. So, I need some cover to hide in. 
It’s super open. Completely hopeless. I am hoping I can get to that woodland over 
there. Uh, hope this road goes to that woodland and then I can find somewhere in the woodland 
hopefully. What a beautiful evening it is though, I mean really nice. It couldn’t be more open, could 
it? Completely flat, no cover, hiding underneath oilseed, 
that’s not going to be easy. Okay, this looks more promising, doesn’t it? I think I’ll have a little look around in here. It was definitely a good thing I’d had the nuts. So I had enough energy 
to deal with all of this calmly. I need a big enough clearing 
to be able to pitch my tent. Maybe there. Great. What a day. I usually put my tent up and put my things 
under cover before I make dinner, but because it was late and I needed to eat, I decided 
to get the stove on immediately. Right. So, it’s going to be pasta with salmon. 
And I’m going to make it first. First, I’m going to boil the water, get the 
pasta cooking, get the salmon soaked, and then put the tent up. So that by the 
time I tent’s up, the dinner will be ready. So that’s the salmon. Then we’re going to have tea. So that’s the 
water for tea. Good. And here’s my tent. I’m going to finish that off now and put everything 
nicely in and I can sit and enjoy evening meal. So, the tent looks great. I’ve gone 
kind of belt-and-braces with the bike, locked and covered it, so that I’m not going 
to start to worry about it in the night. So, I’m actually going to sit inside. Mmh, yeah. So, I’m actually going to sit inside, 
and keep out the way. And there are quite a lot of ants, so I want to keep them out of the 
tent. It’s going to be sunset. Really hot. The thing is, I need to kind of not wear orange when 
I’m here. So, I put my down jacket on. Really hot. Anyway, brilliant. 
And dinner is ready. Feels so nice to take off 
my shoes. End of the day. It looks good actually. So lovely. Where are the people?