I really do love mountains. I can live without the sea, endless forests, or vibrant cityscape; but mountains I really do miss. We don't have any around here - sure, the landscape rolls and undulates, and you can find a mean gradient even in Bedfordshire - but southern England is fundamentally a gentle place.

What this means is while I love looking at them, I am rather less experienced at cycling around (or in unfortunate cases, over) them. Previous highlights have included picking a route directly over a 1000m climb because it "looked more direct" (Shauinsland, in the Black Forest, 2018) and, um, carrying the bike and luggage, in several trips, up an impassably steep slope in Poland (last year) because I have a psychological aversion to turning back.

This perhaps does not bode well for the real Alps which I seem, against all expectations, to be headed for. I originally toyed with hare-brained schemes of working my way across the country north-to-south - perhaps to Slovenia, or over the Brenner pass to Italy. 

A glance at one of my favourite route planning tools - the OpenTopoMap - shows why. England gets the occasional whisp of tan, indicating a few hills, but is basically green. Western Austria is a solid block of no-nonsense dark brown (nowhere in Europe breaks into the elevated white of the Himalayas. I really like it when topographical colour scales do that - it's a bit of a "goes to 11" effect). 

Fortunately, my discovery of the ease of Vienna-German transport means I have the option of heading East, along the valleys and mountain ranges, to finish up in the lowlands (topo green!) around Vienna. This also opens up the possibility of diversions to Hungary and Slovakia, which could be fun (actually Hungary may be off the table as they still have virus restrictions for the UK. Also, the political situation in Hungary has degraded to the point where it is a de facto one-party state - which makes me, perhaps irrationally, reluctant to visit). 

So this gives me a sketch of a plan. An MS paint scribble, really. But it should be (i) roughly 1000km or less and (ii) not murderously hilly, unless I really want it to be.

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Stop press! Since arranging my tickets I now have an extra day. 14 full days of touring means I can probably be more ambitious. Maybe even reach Slovenia. Slovenia is a lovely place, a real gem of a country. Hmmm....