A step down in effort

August 30, 2020

Kramsach — Zell am Ziller

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I had set an alarm for 8, but when it went off I was roused from my deep sleep to a fairly constant patter of water on the flysheet, and I figured there was no loss in dozing until it slackened off somewhat. I'd had a good run the previous day in somewhat challenging conditions, and there was some promise in the weather reports that things would improve as the day went on, so I was quite willing to wait it out.

And wait I did. The tent had evidently been rained on pretty hard through the night, and was getting another drenching this morning, but so far was performing admirably and had kept me almost perfectly dry. I was particularly pleased to feel the groundsheet, which in combination with the footprint, wasn't letting in water anywhere (this is in great contrast to my old tent where it had become almost completely permeable). So I was snugly ensconced in the tent with just the soothing sound of the rain, and had no problem going back to sleep until 9.30.

Finally the rain seemed to slacken and I figured I needed to make a break for it. I got up and got the tent down in what was now drizzle, and then had a brainwave and decided that - if I was going to hang around for a while longer while the rain stopped anyway - I could try to dry the tent out in the drying room before packing it away. It was fairly empty (apart from someone's bike, which I tended to think was quite a bulky object to stuff into the narrow room) so I spread it out, and then collected the Shift.

I was a bit worried about the soaking the bike and panniers would have received, not just overnight but most of yesterday as well. In particular, this would have been the first real exposure of the leather Brooks to serious rain, and I'd protected it only with the cover that came with it - I was cursing myself for not bagging it up (or taking the hint and putting the whole bike in the dry room). But you know what? - that cover performed amazingly. The leather was dry and shiny underneath, and of course the panniers were dry as a bone.

I retired to a large, empty pavilion that I'd used the previous evening to make coffee when similarly waiting for the rain to stop, and had an extended breakfast that turned into lunch - which at least gave me an opportunity to consume the rye bread and cheese I'd lugged all the way from England (why do I always do this?).

A rather water logged morning saw a lot of campers packing up

But the clouds and mists were rising, and I remained optimistic that I'd see the sun today

Some lunch in the empty pavilion while I waited for the tent, and weather, to dry out a bit. I couldn't eat all this cheese in one sitting so I'm afraid it went to waste (at least I didn't have to bury it in a woodland, as I have on two previous tours).

My plans for the day were not strenuous. Given that the weather was still dubious; that I had a really good effort the previous day; and that the natural route was now following the rivers along the valley floors, which seemed to be almost perfectly flat - I thought I could afford to take things easy. Add to this the simple fact of geography that my tentative route for the next few days would take me down the Zillerthal valley before climbing up (and up) out of Tirol over the Gloßner pass. I had no real intention of climbing that 1000m monster today, so the remaining approach was going to be less than 40km of likely easy riding.

This was all to the good, as I was still a bit wary in this strange season about turning up at campsites on Sunday unannounced and expecting to find them open. I should be in Zell am Ziller (in, you guessed it, the Zillerthal by the river Ziller) before 4pm, which would give me plenty of time to arrange alternative accommodation or check out wild camping possibilities if the need arose.

To my pleasure around midday it started brightening up. I spent some time just photographing blue sky, but also captured the (very plush) campsite HQ (camp Toni).

I returned to the drying room and recovered my tent and many other articles that were drying there (taking care not to leave anything behind, as there were no lights). Everything had dried pretty well, even the saturated footprint, and a few more minutes in the sun and I effectively had a dry tent. Lots of other campers gave me a smile and "Morgen" greeting as I packed up.

So a very late start, but the conditions were pretty clear now. The map and GPS indicated a back way into the valley that avoided the not-very-interesting road I had come in on. After a stiff little climb I was spinning down towards Kramsach and Brixlegg in the valley on the Inn, the water quickly being dried off my squealing brakes.

An inordinately friendly little cat. Cats would keep coming up on this trip.

Kramsach itself was a very neat little settlement

The river was unavoidable - I could hear it before I saw it, and it was it heavy spate, muddy and choked with logs washed down from the Alps. I soon picked up the Inn radweg alongside, and followed to the west, the river, the giant expressway, the railway and all the settlements and industry crammed cheek-by-jowl into the valley of the Inn. This really is the great east-west corridor connecting Austria to Switzerland and Germany, and it was densely developed and rather industrialised. On the plus side in contrast to yesterday it was dead flat and the cycleway extremely easy to follow.

I'm always surprised at how industrialised a lot of these developed alpine valleys are. Lots of wood, paper and aggregate extraction.

The cycleway is excellent though, with lots of bike infrastructure, water fountains etc.

The broad valley has been a corridor through the Alps for centuries, and was dotted with the remnants of fortifications through the ages

This one is Schloss Matzen, now apparently a very fancy hotel

With parts dating from Roman times, this has always been a critical point of control of the confluence of the Inn and Ziller valleys, guarding a vital transalpine route

Near Strass I crossed the Ziller as it flowed turbulently into the Inn, and swung to the south. For the rest of the ride I'd be simply following the Ziller valley and the associated off-road radweg all the way to Zell. The valley is actually a dead-end, with the road blocked after Mayrhofen by the extremely large (3,500m) mountains that form the border with Italy (or, for particular partisans, South Tirol).

So I was expecting the Ziller valley to be a sleepy backwater. To my surprise it was full of activity - it's clear that most of the development and economic life takes place in these narrow, flat strips between the mountains. In the one 1km wide valley was crammed sizable towns and industry, and a remarkably busy road that I was glad to completely avoid on the radweg. Any space not taken up by infrastructure was farmed in dense, neat square lots of crops, almost all maize taller than I was.

The going was extremely straightforward and I still had intermittent rays of sun and a decent view, but curiously I found myself feeling a little despondent. It took me a while to put my finger on it, since on the face of it conditions were so much better than yesterday when I'd had a blast, but ultimately I figured that what was unsettling me was the lack of any sort of cover or places you could get lost, or lose yourself. We were hemmed into the valley, which was as flat and open as the fen. Wild camping would have been very difficult indeed. For some reason I became fixated on searching for theoretical wild camping spots, and it was only much later when I saw a possible place by the river that my mind was more at ease.

It was absurd really, I had no intention at all of wild camping, would happily fall back to staying at a guesthouse if the need arose. But I liked the idea that it would be possible if I needed to in a pinch. Most of all, what I was doing was pretty expensive, and I like the idea that someone with really hardly any money at all could pass through if they needed to. Actually most of Austria the terrain is not this unforgiving (45 degree mountain sides or meticulously cultivated valley), and careful wild camping would definitely be possible. But this afternoon it got me down a little.

Crossing the Ziller near Strass. The rivers were awesome in their power - if you fell in you'd be screwed - but choked with silt and branches, were not much to look at

But the views, with mountains peeking through strips of low cloud, were still pretty good

Very typical view of the Zillerthal radweg. Very tall, perfectly square plots of maize; pristinely maintained cycleway; and a lot of infrastructure crammed into the narrow and flat valley floor.

The Schlitterer See, a little bathing lake, might have made a nice stop - but it was closed up, and with the weather becoming increasingly overcast I pressed on towards Zell

Clouds rolled down the valley, I lost the sun and started to get some light rain. I passed a couple of other loaded bikes and said hello, but they didn't seem to be long distance tourers (a pannier set-up is so common in Germany and Austria that often it will be just local riders). The cycleway seemed to also double as a very minor access road, and there was the occasional car. Not that I was expecting anything else, but the drivers were exceptionally cautious in passing, often rather exuberantly putting one set of wheels into the opposite ditch to give me maximum space. On the other hand one car inexplicably did park in the middle of the road right in front of me and then open the doors, rather efficiently blocking the cycleway, but the woman getting out sounded quite apologetic when I murmured "bitte" and squeezed past.

The atmosphere definitely became a bit melancholy Sunday afternoon

The Zillerthal does have its own little train, running on tiny narrow-gauge tracks as far as Mayrhofen

Before I knew it I was in Zell, a handsome town right by the river that strangely was hardly mentioned on my map. I was heartened to see lots of adverts for zimmer frei (and indeed one place advertising "zimmer + fruhstucke, €35, biker wilkommen!") - but on the other hand the place did seem very quiet. Having done a quick search on the GPS for campsites - I was still finding this far superior for navigating the last few kilometres - I wound my way through the town and in a couple of minutes was out the other side and by the well appointed camping Hofer.

At first I was a little confused by the big guesthouse and restaurant of the same name alongside, but mask on and I soon found the reception where despite the earliness (it was still before 4) I found occupied by the bright and friendly receptionist - asking "bitte, moglich camping mit Zelt" gained an enthusiastic English "of course!". €20 again, which seemed to be the going rate, but I was pleased to find everything open and operating and happily picked out a spot (away from the lamps can be pretty damn bright when you're in a tent at night).

Camping Hofer - I was definitely pleased to be getting good use of the tent, despite the dodgy weather

The yr weather app promised the rain was done for the evening, with more possibly falling overnight, so I got the (dry!) tent up and then went for a shower. I wasn't massively pleased then when as I emerged the heavens opened again. Still, the interior of my tent kept dry, and it was probably going to get we overnight anyway.

Coming back from the shower block, I got chatting in broken English to a guy camping opposite, who was not particularly interested in the bike but was fascinated by the fact I was English. He led me over to the other side of the campsite, and pointed out some other campers, who sure enough had UK plates on their car. He was comically quite keen for me to go and meet them, but I was a bit tired out and let him know I'd look them up later. I can understand wanting to point these sorts of coincidences out, but it's still quite funny to me - it's not like I don't get the chance to chat to English people much the rest of the time!

Sitting around in the sanitary block I waited for the now rather heavy rain to stop, and then went into Zell to explore. It had the melancholy but quite fetching air of a resort town out of season - lots of restaurants and cafes were closed up, and a cafe I decided to sit in to kill time and read by the river was closing just as I arrived. The river was wild and generating big metre-high waves as it passed under the main bridge, and I spent some time staring hypnotically into its milky waters. It has been a short and easy day, but I think my strong efforts on the first two days were catching up with me.

I wandered around the whole town, and since I had overloaded on Kaseknoddel the two previous evenings, decided to go for a more informal Italian place. It actually was attached to what I eventually figured out was a hotel school. I managed to greatly confuse the waiter coming in to the largely empty place with my terrible German and by sitting in tables that had been deliberately left free for covid distancing, but once I got my obligatory wheat beer and a pretty good pizza felt much more at home.

[A note on Austrian pizza. It had to be said, I assumed with the the proximity to Italy - at this point I was maybe 30km away from the border - I'd assumed there'd be a pretty strong showing in the pizza restaurant stakes. And indeed, there were plenty of them around. But the odd thing was I don't think I had a really excellent Italian food in any of them - bases were often pre-made, pretty basic cheese was used etc. Don't get me wrong, they were always satisfying and reasonably inexpensive wheels of calories - but none of them blew me away. Strange!]

After the meal I had a longer chat with the waiter, who looked gratifyingly impressed when I told him I had cycled from Munich. When I mentioned that I was probably going for the Gerloss pass the next day, his eyebrows did raise quite a lot, and I wondered what I was letting myself in for...

I was at least greeted with a rainbow when the sun showed through again. I'm amazed this came out in the photo.

The streams of clouds took interesting forms as the sun came out for evening over the Ziller valley

A lot of guesthouses and shops in small Austrian towns were very floral, but I guess since this is above a florist it really has no excuse not to

I'm not sure this helps draw people into the orthodontist

The Ziller runs right alongside the town, and was in heavy spate. Some sort of vortex threw up an impressive wave about a metre high in the milk brown water at this point, and I stood and watched it in fascination. If you fell in here I think you'd next be seen in Budapest.

Very impressive outside auditorium. Those benches are fixed to the ground in this position.

The Italian restaurant, attached to (what I think) is a training hotel

Back at camp the interior of the tent was still very dry, so I made a rather early night in preparation for the early start I wanted to make tomorrow on the pass. There was no alternative but to take the main road - a continuation of the busy 169 road I'd seen in the valley - and I wanted to attack it before it got too busy.

Today's ride: 34 km (21 miles)
Total: 189 km (117 miles)

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