On a sunny spring day, when the Alte Land glows with the white of the apple blossom, the cyclist has no idea of the harshness of this stretch of land, which Dutch settlers wrested from the Elbe in the 12th century. Before they built dykes and dug drainage channels, amphibians rather than people found good living conditions here. Over the centuries, the dykes collapsed several times, killing thousands. In the meantime, the Elbe dyke seems to have withstood record floods. The dyke paths, both inside and outside the dyke, serve as training routes for cyclists - if they are not under water. "We cycle where others go on holiday," says Björn Welskopp from the "Ollanner" cycling team, which means "old country" in Low German. The landscape is also Low German. "North German," says Welskopp and grins, "just like the weather."
You can download the entire article and these GPS tours below:
- Tour 1: Old country
87 km, 150 m elevation gain, max. altitude 50, max. gradient 2 per cent, flat characteristics
- Tour 2: Kehdinger Land
104 km, 60 m elevation gain, max. altitude 10, max. gradient 1 per cent, characteristics potteben
GPS DATA: TOUR offers the tour data for free download. You can download the tracks in GPX format directly onto a GPS device or view them on your computer in Google Earth or Google Maps.
