Thursday 31 July 2014

Hamburg Hbf to Cranz

Today was our first day this year, 2014, on the Elberadweg. We arrived in Hamburg on Tuesday and spent a day settling in and viewing the area around our hotel. This year we are staying a little bit west of where we were last year, not far from the large lake called the Alster.

The first picture is a view back to Hamburg's main railway station on the way to our hotel.

This view is of the southern part of the Alster. The northern part is much larger.
Below  is a picture of the Town Hall in Hamburg, taken this morning on our way south to join up with our old friend the Elbe.
Initially we could only look south across the Northern part of the Elbe to a port area called Steinwerder. It was a vey built up area wth lots of warehouses and coolstores. There was a lot of activity where we first joined the Elbe with many temporary tents being erected.We have yet to find out what event is planned. Will try and remember to ask the hotel staff.
We think this either an office building or a hotel constructed to look like a ship.
After a couple of hours walking we left most of the port storeage area behind and entered a more rural area with some interesting houses. The path beside the river became much more park-like,more like our walking last year. It felt good to be back in the walking/exploring mode again.
We passed many nice sandy beaches, lots of them occupied with sunbathers, the beach below is one of the few quiet areas.
There was plenty of activity on the river with many boats going up and down,
 even though we were approaching low tide.
This final picture was taken on the Cranz ferry looking back towards Blankenese. It took us about 3.5 hours to get there from our hotel. However the ferry didn't take us across the Elbe to Cranz, because the tide was too low (or at least thats what I understood the chap to say who I was chatting to before we moved off.) We finished about 5km up river at Finkenwerder, near the aircraft works. However we were able to get the same bus, 150, back to Altona. Tomorrow we will take the bus back to the Cranz ferry, where we should have been dropped today. We then have a 25km walk to Stade, which if my ferry informant is correct, is surrounded by thousands of heavily laden fruit trees. We shall see.