45th day Midwolda to Varel

Distance: 136km
Total: 4391km

Didn't sleep much; firstly at about midnight started a thunderstorm - or more like electrical storm - everything kept being illuminated by the continuous lightning and that was backed up by continuous noise of thunderstorm. It didn't however ever come on top of the campsite, and shortest major flash to major sound I got about 5 seconds. It also rained heavily every now and then. All and all lasted couple hours.

If the thunderstorm kept me awake late, something else woke me up early. First woke up on some noises, from which one was the sound of cuckoo, which is quite usual along the journey, so I just turned and tried ignore it as usual and continue the sleep. This time however the sound was unusually loud and couldn't sleep. So after a while decided to take a peek outside to see how the weather was like. And there was a sizeable cuckoo 5 meters from my tent eating worms (or something) from the ground and being noisy in cuckooish way.

Day started after that normally - yet bit slowish. It was brilliant bit over 20°C with 'ordered' southwest wind.
It was only 20 kilometers to German border, which was just a small light traffic bridge. Landscape didn't change much, but separate cycling lanes and roads disappeared and cycling paths went along small roads. Also the layout of housing changed from tight villages/towns and fields between them to more spread out housing with more distance between centers.

At border I had to make choice to take more norther or souther route and opted for norther one as it seemed less populated and was more in line with tailwind. And tailwind indeed was great, 25km/h with minimal effort and 30km/h still easily. Fun lasted until Ditzum, where was the linchpin of the norther route, a ferry over the river, which of course had just few minutes before left and would come back in half hour AND then take an hour lunch break. So there I sat 1.5 hours just waiting.

After the ferry the tailwind was still with me and was able to cover good distance. Went eat in Wiesmoor and realized its Sunday, so had to eat in restaurant. Sad thing is that can't fill my empty food stack for the evening or the morning, so the broccoli pizza better last next ~16 hours. Think its gonna be slow morning ride without energy tomorrow.

Found a campsite about 10km after Varel and camped up on campsite with some cow aroma in the air.