Saturday 31 August 2013

Thursday 29 August. Hitzacker to Neu Darchau.

After a very pleasant two day stay at our B&B and a good breakfast we set off on our way. Frau Radke suggested that as we were walking and not biking, we should use the south bank of the Elbe thus avoiding two ferry crossings.

The road out of Hitzacker, up past the Jugendherberge (YHA), was an easy climb for a walker but would have been a bit of a pain for a cyclist. From the YHA onwards it was largely all down hill, on a very pleasant forest walk (see first two photographs) until we joined the road down by the Elbe near Tiessau. Somewhere near Tiesmesland we saw a working farm but it had an interesting collection of plastic farm animals in its garden, I found it amusingly eccentric for a place with real animals. See accompanying photograph.

We then took an Elbeside path to Drethem which was in a reserve and only suitable for walkers. There was plenty of wetland for mosquitoes and frogs and a number of fallen trees that had to be negotiated.

We then started to head  inland a bit and a little up hill through some small villages. I got a nice photograph of a thatched farm building that was near the German Stork Road, that we were now walking. We saw a few empty nests but no storks.

We followed near the Elbe into New Darchau. There were some very expensive houses on the south side of town and one had a beautiful bronze horse in the garden. I took a photograph. The horse was bigger than a man. It is difficult to judge scale from the photograph alone.

They obviously had a lot of problems with flood water in New Darchau as can be seen from the last slide of an improvised sandbag Deich built behind the housing area where we are now staying.

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