Day 26: Fighting technology

 This morning I cycled through Weliko Tarnowo before starting the tour for real.

After about 10km I left the main road with most of the traffic behind. Cycling was relaxed and slow and I stopped often. No sense in pushing hard in these temperatures.

The trouble began, when I booked an accomodation I had only to go 40km via road 3 in a straight line. But then I noticed that road 3 is a motor road and I wasn't allowed to cycle there. Also even after telling the routing software, that it should not use that road it still insisted on going there. So I picked a route by hand and started cycling. Uphill. Nice view, but straining again.

At some point my router accepted, that I was not cycling back to road 3 and gave me a new route. That route had two problems: The street suddenly went from a nice road to a gravel path:

And after cycling/pushing/cursing my velomobile forward for 6km on gravel I ended up back at road 3. Still 12km to go. I hoped that the status of the road might have changed or otherwise to perhaps just cycle there, since in the evening there should not be too much traffic.

When I turned the corner I saw the motor road sign and a police car sitting right beside it. Instead of taking the road I asked the police man where I could cycle and he send me on another 10km detour.

This was not the end of my fight with the routing. The proposed routing was another even larger detour. And I could not understand why. So I took the more direct road. For some kilometers I was told to turn back. Even after hacing climbed a hill. Only after some time going downhill again the router used the new route. And while I was rolling downhill at 40+ km/h it told me I was supposed to take one hour for the remaining 13km. I was a bit afraid what might await me down there that might take so long. But then the time came down bit by bit. For some reason this road must be misconfigured in OpenStreetMap.

Finally after arriving in Plewen I noticed, that "Ride with GPS" was paused since lunch, when I had restarted my phone. So the track for today is incomplete and you cannot even see all by detours :(

Plewen is not a place to stay for long, so I will continue cycling at a slow pace despite the temperatures. Greece will be getting 44°. It can always be worse. Let's see what tomorrow will be like.