Map of Amsterdam, NE to Cuxhaven, DE (Aug 23rd-Aug 30th)

We took the Maybe! But only as far as Makkum - one day on the Ijsselmer, which is a fresh water, inland sea. The map below is wrong in two ways. Firstly, we took the Maybe from right in Amsterdam all the way to Makkum, but of course google maps can't route that. When we got off in Makkum on the 25th of August we rode east, with the wind, across the northern Netherlands and camped outside Drachten, at Bakkeveen. The next night we stayed at Englebert, on the far side of Groningen, where we had spent the afternoon. The following day we made it back to Germany, riding all the way to the border town of Nieuweshans in big rain and wind (rainy days these all were), then north against a huge headwind towards the ferry at Ditzum for Emden, where the Ems River (a river we had met at it's source back near Rheda-Wiedenbruck) meets the North Sea, where we stayed in a hotel for the night (Aug. 27th).

Our first days back in Germany were also very rainy, and we kind of hurried across northern Germany. From Emden on the 28th, we raced across the landscape on the Ems-Jade Canal, which cuts straight across the landscape towards Wilhelmshaven, where we stayed again in a hotel (we thought we wouldn't make it all the way, and then when we did power through we were there late and there were no campsites). In the morning of the 29th we took a ferry across to Eckwarderhorne - this is where the map below fails the second time, as google doesn't know about that ferry apparently. Again we raced across the landscape, with help from the wind, making it to Blexen on the far side of the Weser River (an old friend), where we took another ferry, to Bremerhaven (where Sail Bremerhaven was going on - we had hoped to take the Maybe that far, but they didn't go). So that's two ferries in one day.

At the end of that long ferry happy day, we stayed on the slightly less windy side of the German dyke holding back the North Sea, in Cappel-Neufeld. We enjoyed some pretty fantastic days on the North Sea as we cruised north to Cuxhaven. In Cuxhaven, we planned to take another ferry, across the Elbe to Brunsbuttel.


View Larger Map