Day 12: Tackling the longest distance!

Yesterday, when visiting the BUGA, the weather was great and today was beautiful as well. The next few days will also remain dry: The north of Thuringia, the south of Lower Saxony, and the Harz mountains are being kind to us! After leaving our small apartment, we wanted to buy breakfast at a bakery in the neighborhood. However, that turned out to be more difficult than expected. The first bakery around the corner was closed due to holidays, and the second bakery we chose in Gispersleben was also closed due to holidays. Bad luck! So we had to settle for an Edeka in Elxleben (on the Gera River). At 12 o'clock, we continued with full strength or rather full bellies towards Gebesee, always along the Gera River or on the Gera cycle path. Where the Gera flows into the Unstrut, our path made a 90° turn to the west towards Bad Langensalza. We passed the asparagus village Herbsleben and Großvargula along the Unstrut River. We followed the Unstrut cycle path to Zella, through the idyllic Unstrut Valley. A beautiful cycle path with few meters of altitude, which partly runs through the Unstrut Valley nature reserve (and others) to Nägelstedt. There, Janina almost ran over (presumably) a field hamster with her bike! When we arrived in Bad Langensalza, the spa and rose town, we had already covered more than 45 kilometers.

Unfortunately, we did not take a break in Bad Langensalza, even though it is supposed to be a very nice little town. Since we still had several kilometers ahead of us, we continued cycling to Mühlhausen. It remained a very green route, mostly following the flat Unstrut. Around 5pm, we arrived in Mühlhausen. Here, we were very close to the geographical center of Germany. We checked whether we should get something for dinner in advance or whether our accommodation operated a restaurant with delicious cuisine. The latter was the case, so we continued along the Unstrut to Zella. The altitude meters increased again, much to the delight of our thighs :-) Our thighs cooled down upon arrival in the village of Zella/Anrode: It unexpectedly started to rain. But that shouldn't have surprised us, as it had become customary that a shower was waiting for us shortly before reaching our destination for the day. With the many single and two-family houses in Zella, it was easy to find a carport that could temporarily protect us from the drizzle. While waiting there in the dry for rain-free weather, we consulted our navigation system one last time to find out where we had to go for the final stretch. This question was quickly answered, even with the additional information that there were still almost 80 meters of altitude to overcome in the final 1 km. Very nice!

Indeed, it was quite a steep ascent to the Lengefelder Warte, where our hotel and dinner were waiting for us. We arrived visibly exhausted around 7pm. The Sander family warmly welcomed us, they have been operating the Lengefelder Warte for 4 generations already. We were able to store our bicycles in a garage. Our beautiful room was located under the roof at the back. After a short break - we enjoyed 1 liter of Elotrans and a refreshing shower - it was time for dinner. We were able to sit outside, where we were immediately greeted by a young cat :-) The vegetarian dishes and desserts were among the best we were able to enjoy along the route to Sylt. In terms of price, the dinner (3 courses) 'only' made it to 2nd place with 90 euros. Around 10pm, we took a short walk around the corner to the round tower of the original Warte. It dates back to 1360/80 and was part of a late medieval defense system of the free imperial city of Mühlhausen. We looked up at the cloudless sky, which was fortunately very dark as well (there was no other development within a radius of 1 km). So we were able to see several shooting stars within a few minutes on the last day of the Perseid meteor shower. It was a very nice end to a challenging day.

Data for Stage 11:

Distance traveled: 82.9 km
Travel time: 6:06h
Average speed: 13.6 km/h
Max. speed: 39.2 km/h
Altitude meters: 458 m