September 15, 2014
Niederranna - Abwinden
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
I never saw so many cyclists outside a Dutch city. [see above] After breakfast, as we loaded our bikes, a van with a bike trailer came to collect the luggage of those on the assisted tour. The rain was gone and we set out into the sunshine with that born-again feeling. There were so many bikes and for the most part pretty slow-moving, The bell I bought in Holland 5 years ago got plenty of use. Opposite the village of Schlögen, we took the ferry over the river. The path on the left bank peters out, so you have to cross. Here is the start of Die Schlögene Schlinge, the Schlögen bend or loop. The link is to a WikiP page in German, but it shows a couple of aerial shots. The river here comes up against a mass of impenetrable granite and flows north-westwards before re-establishing its proper course towards the Black Sea, a 25km loop or Schlinge. This section is a pretty ride, no traffic just the woods and the river and a lot of other cyclists. I was overhearing American English for the first time on the Danube.
At Aschach. the route took us over the river again, onto back roads through sunny fields, via Feldkirchen, before rejoining the riverbank. Here we noticed what we couldn't have suspected in the shelter of Die Schlögene Schlinge, a headwind, not too strong at first, but increasing as the day went on. We would have the wind in our faces for the next three and a half days, until Orth-an-der-Donau. The prevailing wind is from the west, but weather is weather and on the plus side it wasn't raining. We rode over the dam above Ottersheim and then through woods, where we stopped to eat, then again to the river for the ferry back to the other side. Out of Ottersheim the bike path is next to a busy main road as far as Linz, a noisy, unattractive, out of town retail stretch we were glad to see the back of.
From just beyond Linz the path hugs the river, but that meant no shelter from the wind. After about 10 miles was a tourist notice board advertising accommodation and after three calls I found a room in nearby Abwinden, at the Gasthof Radlwirt, literally the cyclist's host. I was given directions over the phone and we left the riverbank, by means of a cyclists' subway under the main road and were there in a few minutes.
The owner, Michael, gave us a very hospitable welcome. He told us he had a cousin from Yorkshire staying with him. After WWII, he said, his aunt had married an English soldier and moved to England.
We shared an outside dining table with Franz and Tomas, also cyclists, from Regensburg, on their way to Vienna. They were drinking non-alcoholic, but still cloudy Weissbier with their meal, apparently non-alcoholic beer has become very popular in Germany. I don't much care for Weissbier,[it's cloudy for starters] alcoholic or not, so in the absence of draught pilsner, I drank the local helles [bright] beer. I accidentally ordered a shandy, by asking for the Radler Menu, but omitting to say the word menu. Radler means cyclist, but it also means shandy. As the hotel, eponymously, caters for cyclists, they offer a fixed price cyclists' menu. That's what I wanted, not beer diluted with lemonade. I got both in the end. I didn't drink the shandy. The main course was steak covered in tomato sauce, with cheese melted over the top. It sounds a bit odd, but was very edible.
I asked Franz and Thomas if there was any particular place we should stay on the Donauradweg, between there and Vienna, where would that be. “Melk,” they said, so later that evening, Barbara booked a room there, from her phone.
Also later that evening, I met the cousin, who spoke English with a strong South Yorkshire accent and gave me a fellow Yorkshireman kind of welcome. He could also handle the local Austrian accent, which only made me envious. He was short, stocky with a tied off elongated goatee beard, which [and I can't really say why] I found incredibly irritating. He had been a teacher in Yorkshire, a member of the communist party, now lived most of the year in Tenerife. He also laid claim, through his mother, to being a member of the Austrian aristocracy, incongruous, with that Yorkshire miners' accent. He was Graf [Count] Shteve, in my mind from then on. Conversation with him was a more than a little one-sided. He told me, among a lot else, that nearby, there was a massive underground tank park for when the Soviet Union might have invaded. I stayed up, mostly listening, later than was sensible, drinking more beer and sharing a joint [his].
Today's ride: 90 km (56 miles)
Total: 1,234 km (766 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 2 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |