“Tonight if you would like, you can have one of my girls.”
“That's very kind of you, but I don't think my wife would approve.”
“Your wife? Oh, she can hold the camera.”

The above conversation is made up. From two separate encounters. The first two lines from a night in a bar in Brielle, Holland in 1989, when I was on a cycling trip, the third from a chance meeting on a London street, when I wasn't. It's not often you get the offer of a free gift from a brothel-owner. There were no such encounters this time. Still, once in 36 years of touring isn't bad.

If you've read this far, thank you, you are to be praised for your fortitude. We rode over 1000 miles, and nowt happened. What me and our lass did on holiday; caught a train, rode a bike, ate and slept. Still, sometimes it just feels fantastic to be wandering around, under your own steam, in a strange place, not knowing what's going to happen next, even though in this case, not much.

We avoided hills as far as possible on this tour, as stated earlier, at Barbara's request. Our previous trip was an erratic and incomplete Via Francigena. We called a halt in Tuscany, because Barbara had had enough of climbing up to Tuscan hill towns and we only went to one. My first plan included riding from Saarbrücken through France, then back into Germany and up into the Black Forest. I thought I might have to give up on that, hence the train ride. The Black Forest looked beautiful from the window of the train, but on that section of the journey was its highest point and that was on a train. Donaueschingen itself, is higher than Le Signal de Botrange in Belgium.

On occasions the Donauradweg, was just too busy to produce that feeling of getting away from it all, even if illusory, that previous tours have given us. It's a pleasure to meet other bike tourists when you're in some out of the way place, not so much when you're part of a crowd. Some of it is dull. It's odd that in the Alps, for example, you encounter a lot of other touring cyclists, because it's mountainous and on the Danube because it's [mostly] flat. As I said in the piece, a lot of people, including us now, would ride this route because they are no longer up to more challenging terrain. There are probably more, who never were. The busiest stretch as statistics show was between Passau and Vienna. We couldn't help feeling, though, that on the windy, less scenic stretches on the dyke between hydro-dams, where we saw fewer riders, that some of the organised cycle tour customers had decided to have a day off.

We chose to ride with the prevailing wind, but didn't have it all our own way in that respect. Funnily enough, when confronted with the headwind in Austria, we just buckled down, gritted our teeth and got on with it. If we hadn't had the adversity, I am sure we would have been more inclined to dawdle.

Historical tourism, while on the move, we didn't do at all, other than take the odd photograph of a castle or a church. It's not as though we're not interested in the past or don't appreciate the artistry or craftsmanship that is there for all to marvel at. We've spent a week in Rome, for example, a week in Moscow, and embraced full-on tourism. That enthusiasm seems to dissolve when sitting on a bicycle. We were bad tourists, but tourists just the same, although we gave Budapest, quite a good looking at. We should have stayed longer. In Melk, as we arrived, a crowd of river cruiser passengers were getting back on the boat. Presumably, every day, this small town of 5000 people has its population swelled by large numbers of day visitors. I just don't want to be in that number. Hungary, a new country for us, was quieter, sometimes with good reason. I enjoyed Hungary, but the natives seemed more taciturn than in Austria or Germany. That may be because of the fact that Hungarian is not much spoken, except by Hungarians, rather than a national characteristic. It may be because, visitors, perceiving that they have little chance with the language, also tend to be a little closed off, with one thing leading to the other. Five days in the country, doesn't make an expert though.

The train ride back was a bit of an epic; three days, sixteen trains, fifteen changes. The fares themselves were not expensive, but having to stay over in hotels and to feed ourselves over that time made it more so. If you like train travel, without whizzing past everything at extra high-speed it's quite enjoyable. There's limited opportunity for sight-seeing, although we might have given more time to Mönchengladbach. The rail itinerary, just to lay it out, for anyone who might care to try it, was:

Thursday
Budapest - Györ
Györ – Bruck-an-der-Leitau [A]
Bruck-an-der-Leitau – Wien Hütteldorf
Wien Hütteldorf – Sankt Valentin
Sankt Valentin - Linz
Linz – Passau [D}

[Einfach-Raus]

,Friday
Passau - Plattling
Plattling - Regensburg
Regensburg - Nuremberg
Nuremberg - Würzburg
Würzburg – Frankfurt-am-Main/Flughafen
Frankfurt-am-Main/Flughafen - Koblenz
Koblenz - Mönchengladbach

Quer-Durchs-Land

Saturday
Mönchengladbach – Venlo [NL]
Venlo – Rotterdam Centraal
Rotterdam Centraal – Hoek van Holland

The overnight Harwich - Hoek van Holland ferry route is my favourite way in and out of England. It's nice to wake up in a foreign land, even if that foreign land, for an English person, is the least foreign of them all. It's also nice to get an early [for us] start for a change. A word of warning about docking in Harwich on a weekend, particularly Sundays, the railway line between Harwich and London is subject to weekend engineering work and there may be a replacement bus service in operation, which, in theory will not take bicycles, although we have persuaded the driver to take ours on one occasion. It is also possible that the service might terminate in Stratford [East London, not the birthplace of the bard], instead of Liverpool St. The British Rail National website is here.

Goede reis.
Bon Voyage
Gute Reise
Jo utat kivanok