Down the Elbe - into Magdeburg

See all the drawings here http://bit.ly/elbe2017


A shorter cycling day and the boys headed off in sunshine. I walked around Barby.

All very quiet, people had gone to work, school.

A dog’s bark or the wine of a mobility scooter occasionally punctuated the silence. A made a drawing, went to the ATM and headed off.

Dear Barby

Pulpit - A waterfall of Baroque Magdeburg

Cheek by knickers  Magdeburg

Through a warm flat landscape with little or no traffic, which was to be a constant across the week. This was part of the Great North German Plain. 

The river is very broad now. The Romans knew the Elbe as the Albis; they once attempted to move the Eastern border of their empire forward from the Rhine to the Elbe. The attempt failed at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD. In the Middle Ages the Elbe formed the eastern limit of the Empire of Charlemagne. The river's navigable sections were also essential to the success of the Hanseatic League of which Magdeburg was a member.

Lunchtime saw the cyclists and their driver in Magdeburg. I unloaded the luggage and waited for the chaps.

The afternoon was devoted to having a good look round. A gothic lovely, the cathedral of St Saints Catherine and Maurice is quite close to the river and a Romanesque monastery almost next door. This city was on a par with Rome and Constantinople as particular stages of its early history. It was later to be the birthplace of composer Georg Telemann.