Hull to Hannover to Hameln via Rotterdam Centraal and Amsterdam Centraal. There were times – most notably on Minden platform at 8 p.m. yesterday when we were all turfed off the Amsterdam-Berlin train – when I thought we might not get here. I’d had an ominous feeling about that train ever since Rheine when the Dutch train crew announced that the German train crew had been delayed. But heigh ho: it gave us an opportunity to recollect other times when that train route has let us down. The holiday where we never got to Berlin at all is in first place, but the most memorable is the one where I was definitely not going to let anything get in the way of seeing Radio Kootwijk.

We got to Hannover only an hour late, and today we cycled to Hameln. Hannover holds lots of memories as the start and end point for cycle rides plus the time I saw Tosca at the opera house. We left via the Maschsee – and suddenly all yesterday’s hassle was worth it. Then cross country to Springe and finally Hameln. As we headed into the countryside (enormous, featureless fields with hills in the distance and an horizon bristling with pylons and wind turbines) I wondered why I was making such heavy weather of cycling. I haven’t done this for a while, but it really felt as if I was pedalling with the brakes in. I finally twigged that we were pedalling gently uphill (well, doh, we were moving from one river to another, the Leine to the Weser), and after Springe we had our reward with easy stretches on gentle downhill gradients.

Not many photographs – much as I was pleased to experience the sense of space, it really doesn’t photograph well. Towards the end I stopped to photograph starlings threaded onto a pylon.

We arrived too late for me to walk round Hameln, but I have been here before. I liked the sights of timber-framed houses with their decorations in the villages around Hameln; they reminded me of the Weser Renaissance style.

The headline in a newspaperI spotted in Hannover referred to the reduction in numbers of young people with professional/occupational qualifications. I guess that is of concern in such a high-maintenance country as Germany.