Category: Biking

I woke up to pouring rain, so luckily it wasn’t an early start. By the time i had to leave to collect my bike from the repairers the rain had eased off a little.

Excellent news on reaching Bike7, the bike was all fixed the shop owner, in jest (I think) offered for me to run the shop whilst he pedalled around Europe 🙂

It now looks as if the the Wahoo SC cadence/speed bluetooth device is kaputt, I replaced the battery but all to no avail, so that was a 5 minute wonder 🙁

Bit of a nightmare leaving Vienna through crowded pedestrian areas over slippery cobbles & tram tracks, imagining bent wheels. I eventually made it over the canal & river bridges and onto the cycleway, which was so smooth and so glorious I missed the turning and ended up at a dead end then having to cycle a couple of miles back and  go through the forest of petrol/JET fuel holders to reach the main path into the National Park helped by a glorious tail wind 🙂 & just a few heavy showers to contend with.

I eventually made it to the derelict border post, which is what our border posts would be like, if only the UK had signed up to the  Schengen  Agreement, it always seems to be that the UK opts out of anything that would make life simpler.

Then it was over the huge, but very shaky bridge into Bratislava. I totally forgot about lack of internet been so used to free roaming on 3 in Austria so didn’t use AroundMe. However, The Hotel Devin loomed in front of me, a real **** place, after a bit of negotiation I got a magnificent  room for €80 which in some places in the UK gets you a b&b. This place has a Spa Centre with affordable massages and the most incredible breakfast to date & to top it all free WiFi with 3MB upload rates 🙂

The weather looks good today so I will explore Bratislava with one of Emily’s au-pairs from 13 years ago.

In all the messing about with the cadence device I forgot to switch on Strava. But the etrex recorded this track.

adding another 52 miles to make a  total of 1,674 miles biked of which 649 miles is along The Danube.

The pictures are here

Thankfully the overnight rain had stopped although the temperature is really dropping now & I had my first white fingers of the tour. I did the 76 miles from Melk to Vienna staring with a climb out of Melk before a steep descent back onto the Danube  which today was squashed between hillsides covered in vines and fields of orchards. All very pretty and as a reminder that the Danube is not always so placid all the villages were surrounded by 1 metre high concrete wallls with spaces to slot in metal barriers when the river rises.

One of the hydroelectric plants had displayed a water turbine housing, enormous just look how tiddly my bike looks! Bit see the power it generates . 39,000 kW from a 14 metre head of water! There were two more coal/oil power stations closed down as well. With one of them proudly displaying on a LED display its solar generation capacity, it was  showing 84kW or 0.2% of the water turbine!

I saw several cruise ships mainly going up river, none seemed very busy, so I guess the season must have ended.

I eventually reached Vienna making  me 1/3 of the way down the Danube, I passed the 2,000km to The Black Sea marker today.

I think the battery on my Wahoo bluetooth cadence sensor has packed up so the Strava data is now limited to GPS & the heart rate monitor.

The pics are here 

Today after biking 2,678km I have given myself a couple of days off in Vienna, although I confess to doing a lot of sleeping today. in The Hotel Anatol

However, I did go out and buy some new Adipure V22625 lightweight running shoes to replace the Saucony ones. Laufsport is totally dedicated to running situated on the first floor with only a discrete door & bell it was a world away from any UK high street sports place!

I also took a look at  the Hammam but it was ridiculously expensive so I will wait to Budapest or maybe Bratislava.