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Danube Bike Trail Day 7 – Passau to Linz

Another excellent days biking and  64 miles on the clock, making it 719km cycled along The Danube in the first week. I make that 25% of the total Danube distance.

Action shot taken with self timer
Action shot taken with self timer

Today was a terrific day apart from the last 7km, maybe it would have been  better to cross onto the right bank over the locks at Hagenau.

Prior to this the route was spectacular on smooth quiet paths tightly following the Danube as it wound its way through heavily wooded gorges. You have to use 3 little ferry services, but they add to the fun. Definitely a recommended cycling day.

Tonight I’m at Hotel Mühlviertlerhof  (warning: music starts up!) in the centre of Linz, yet another excellent find by the Around Me app. I love that these places start serving breakfast from 06.15, South West coast path accommodation take note!

Dinner after much searching was at the really excellent Mia Cara Italian place. In facr today has been an excellent foodie day with the exquisite breakfast at  Anton in Passau  followed by coffee & cake at Jochenstein, then my fish & beer at  Martins Rauchkuchl. for lunch.

Here is the Strava report for the day and the pictures are here

Strava_Ride___Passau_to_Lindt

Danube Bike Trail Day 6 – Tegernheim to Passau

Well that’s all 595km of Book 1 done and dusted!  that only leaves books 2 (320km), 3 (340km)  & 4  (1600km) to do or  2260km (1412miles)  left on The Danube. Interestingly I’ve already biked 2338km, so about half way from Cambridge to the Black Sea, the long way around , not the direct route.

IMG_4323Today was gorgeous! spinning along smooth bikeways with just odd bits of gravel track and no roads (of course Germany bans trucks on Sunday’s). I did the 90.6 miles in good time helped by a tail wind and flat roads. Was lovely to see all the dads with their young kids learning to do distance biking on the gorgeous paths, like me 60 years ago 🙂

I’m quite liking Passau, my room is enormous, the place has no name, I just saw a phone number in a window :-). The owner recommended the pizza place  behind the church where I met Werner a fellow 47er whose interest is doing up Ferrari’s and MGa’s etc. He confessed to having a push bike which he hasn’t ridden, although he looked pretty fit to me 🙂 Maybe we can get him biking in Cambridge…

IMG_4348It’s great to see the huge boats, carrying coal, vast numbers of new cars, containers and of course passengers  on The Danube now and the size of the river locks are humongous, English canals seem so twee in comparison. Keep thinking wicked thoughts about bribing a captain to take me & the bike back to the North Sea once I’ve finished 🙂

Tomorrow is Austria and apparently 3 have scrapped roaming charges there, although how you really know that, is going to be a challenge to work out! The forecast doesn’t look to good either, rain every day for a week 🙁

Here is the Strava and today’s average speed at 12.4 mph over the 90 miles is the best yet, ignoring the mega downhill from Les Gets to Evian 🙂

Strava_Ride___Tegernheim_to_Passau

The photos are here 

Danube bike trail Day5 Ingolstadt to Tegernheim

An excellent days cycling . Mainly on gravel paths along the bank of The Danube , the days highlights including a pendulum ferry across to Eining, a ride on a motorised punt through the amazing Jura limestone gorge at Weltenburg and for something totally different listening to a group of guys singing Schubert in Weltenburg Abbey.

I left after another excellent breakfast & determined to stay on the river banks today, so I started by ignoring all the bike signs and headed for the river – where I ended carrying the bike down the steps 🙁 but once on the gravel path it’s so much better than zig zagging along streets. I bumped into my German friends again, as they were having a banana break. I stayed with them and with their help found the ferry at Eining to get as across to the right bank.

Lunch, with the best brown beer ever, was at the splendid Weltenburg Abbey, I shudder to imagine at the money the monks are making with the restaurant franchise, The abbey itself is totally OTT and I loved that the designer Cosmas Damian has an effigy of himself peering from the dome,  a fun guy. A really moving experience was listening  to the group of  men singing Schubert in the perfect acoustics of the building.

My German friends had found out we could rent our own punt to take us through the gorge rather than the monster boat. (the first large powered boat on The Danube)  A great deal too. at €6 each.  Still marvelling at the free climbers going up the vertical limestone cliffs.

At Kelheim it was time for a sad farewell to the Germans as they headed back up the Rhein-Donau canal whilst I continued down the Danube. I made it to Regensburg in good time but the two hotels I found I went in didn’t gel with me so I continued on to Tegernheim and the Gasthouse Goetzfried and yet another bizarre  internet login system. for a pathetically slow connection.

The GPS says 58.8 miles done today. I switched of Strava in Regensburg, once again it failed to pick up the heart monitor or the cadence stuff.

 

The pictures are here

Danube bike trail Daay 4 – Schwenningen to Ingolstadt

With great difficulty I left my bed at 8am to enjoy the breakfast. The Schloss Kaltneck in Schwenningen  is probably the best bargain of all time, when I left the final bill was €60,60 including €6.38 of taxes. That was for b&b, two course sumptuous dinner and a litre of beer. You don’t get that on the South West Coastpath.

The route today had 3 pretty tough climbs plus a lot of it was alongside roads away from The Danube so not very pleasant. Outside Neuberg there was yet another umleitung,  how councils world wide love digging up streets & putting in cobbles, slabs etc . I glanced at the Open Street Map in the Gaia app and noticed a path through the woods to the river 🙂  so much better negotiating branches & rocks than street pavements. So thank you Steve Coast for creating Open Street Map an amazing achievement.

I met up with the two German couples from Nuremberg (if you are reading this then please leave a comment) for quite a while, through them I learnt that two beer gardens were shut so we ended up  in the carpark at EDEKA an excellent food supermarket.

Tonight It’s the Hotel Anker in the centre of the town, I collapsed on the bed only to be woken by a loud hailer from some guy ranting in front of the NPD bandwagon.

Today was 55 miles at a sub 10mph speed, so I am tired!) Making it a total of 1,312 since leaving home.

Here is the Strava:

Strava_Ride___Schwenningen_to_Ingolstadt

and pictures here