Day 17 – Schoenberg – Dorf Mecklenburg (55 km)

Sixteen days we are on the road and I notice that I still want too much. Especially making contacts is too slow for me. I want more interaction and more contact with the people, even though I estimate that several hundred people pass by the tree bike every day. I want to keep learning, watch and listen carefully to what is happening and how it can be done better. And realizing that it is an exploratory tour, a tryout.

As we are about to drive away from our overnight spot, a man comes walking up, whose wife appears to be the pastor of the large church on the square. He gives us a booklet with bicycle routes in the vicinity of Schoenberg, including all kinds of other addresses. He also gives his email address, both useful as contacts for Schoenberg. I cycle with Sanne, and Richard and Daan take the cars. We are nicely on schedule and have about fifty kilometers to go on this Sunday, up to Dorf-Mecklenburg. The route for the whole tour has been completely figured out by Richard in advance on Komoot and Outdoor-Active, which is very nice. Occasionally there are spots that are a bit awkward for the tree bike, making it bumpy crawling forward, but most of the roads are fine. Our tree doesn’t have it easy. It does have some brown leaves but that seems to be common for a holm oak. It has lasted just under seven hundred kilometers anyway. We are watching it closely, and have a sensor for moisture. There is literally a lot of space today, lots of vistas, open fields, arable farming and a pleasant tranquility. The north German landscape has all the time, it seems. Along the way, Sanne makes videos as the tree bike cycles past a budding beech forest through which the sun shines magically. Beautiful. All day the sky is bright blue again, how lucky, and that at the end of April. A few kilometers before Grevensmühlen we stop at a cheerfully messy place where they have coffee. Leo, whose real name is Detlef was very interested in our story. We give him a little tree and the forest book. This is such a potentially exciting place that can start to mean a lot to Circle4Change. The seed has been planted. We cycle on and after Grevensmühlen and a whole stretch of county road without much traffic, on this Sunday, we end up on a two kilometer gravel path through a forest. Beautiful but not so nice for the tree bike. It’s taking a beating. We are about eight kilometers from our final destination today when Richard calls to say that his drone has crashed and cannot be found. We turn around and help search, fortunately he manages to pick up a signal. We find the drone again, but badly damaged. Bad luck. Fortunately he has a spare drone with him, but still. Not nice. There is not much to do in Dorf-Mecklenburg, so we follow the route and two kilometers further on in Moidentin we find a place near the former water mill where the tree bike and trailer may be parked for the night. With both cars we drive to Wismar, nine kilometers to the north, where we spend the night. Fine place with beautiful buildings and lots of history. We are tired and cannot cook here so we walk to the harbor where we drink a beer and eat something in the evening sun. Totally good. After dinner we walk into the harbor for a while it is almost windless. Around ten we are back. We found out today that especially during the day while cycling, we need to rest and especially enjoy it, because in the evening there are all sorts of things to take care of, from logistics to socials to report to new overnight bookings.