Hamburg Altes Land Bicycle tour part one

Wilkommen im Alten Land

Airbus is located around the Altes Land area

Myself, with my Astro Boy mask =) ;) and our bikes around the Altes Land

One of the readers of this blog, suggested us to take a trip around the "Altes Land" in the southern areas of Hamburg, with our recent acquired bicycles. And yesterday that's what we did. We bought a book last Friday about Bicycle tours in Hamburg, and the tour around the "Altes Land" was included, and after the suggestion of our reader (Thank you very much!!) we decided to give it a go. I am going to divide the trip to the "Altes Land" in 4 or 5 posts, as there is too much to talk about. Here we are with the first one then.

After we had a small breakfast, we left from our place around 11:00. We drove our bycicles to "Landungsbrücke", where you take the ferry to cross the Elbe river to get to the south. The ferry must be the one direction "Finkenwerder". If you are interested in doing this bicycle tour, that's what you must do, if you plan to do the whole tour with the bike or you just drive with your car down there. This option might be better as the ferry gets packed with such a lot of people and their bikes with the same intention. The ferry is a city service and is not expensive.

I should not forget something. A map to drive around the Altes Land is absolutely necessary. Forget to visit the area with no map. And bring along someone that speaks good German, whereas you may find yourself with directions (in German) "next to" or "crossing and turn left" or "pass by", etc, which makes a difference between getting lost and getting the correct way. If it would not be because of my wife, there is no way I could have done this bike trip.

That been said, and once you get to Finkenwerder, ride your bicycle and you are on your way to the Altes Land. Finkenwerder is a normal German northern city with some interesting old houses which, I could dare to say, resemble some influence of Art Nouveau and Jugendstil.

After 4 or 5 km, you leave the city and you find yourself on the auto road and a plain with some nature. But after some minutes pedaling, you are at the entrance (one of them) of Airbus (the second photo above). Now, I know Airbus is in many cities in Europe (Toulouse, somewhere in Andalusia, Bremen, etc...), but this area is quite big and impressive. During our trip around the Altes Land, we saw often several kinds of planes doing tests, big planes and small planes. It was not annoying at all, perhaps because it was Sunday.

We kept on with the bicycles for some kilometers more, with the Elbe River on our right side. And then, the Altes Land began: the first trees with white flowers blossoming.