June 5, 2022
Day 54: Bad Gastein to Spittal
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Our Pension threw an unusual gambit into the breakfast quality sweepstakes, by offering a juicing machine and a basket of apples, carrots, and ginger. This was a big with us, and as is well known, fresh juice - especially with ginger - gives you an extra boost. They also had nuss schnecken, of decent quality. These are also high octane cycling fuel.
All the octane really wasn't needed, because we were already at the top of Bad Gastein. We stepped outside and looked with satisfaction at the clouds clearing themselves from over the EuroSpar next door, and cruise over to the next hamlet, Bockstein.
Just beyond Bockstein we spotted a trailer belonging to a company that brings cyclists back from the Adriatic, as far as Salzburg. As it happens, Suzanne Gibson had already tipped us off to the existence of this company in yesterday's comments, and we had already taken her sage advice. Our plan now is to use the shuttle service to bring us up from Grado to Möllbrücke. In our original plan, Möllbrücke was the spot on the Drau from which we had planned to set off west along the river, ultimately to go over the Brenner Pass and back to Bad Tolz and then Munich. So now after detouring down to the Adriatic, we will use the shuttle to put ourselves right back on route. Thanks Suzanne!
Now we come to something that has been described in many another blog, and we must say these descriptions helped us a lot in understanding the procedure. The only way south after Bockstein is through a tunnel, and only the train goes in the tunnel. Therefore both cars and bikes need to get on the train. The first step is to buy a ticket, which for bike and rider is 6 euros, up from the 5 euros that others reported. The ticket office is at the far left of the train station, and the cars line up there. Once they pass the ticket wicket they will drive right, onto the train. But as cyclists, we butted in to the car line and bought our tickets, then we butted out and rode freeform down to the front of the train, where the bicycle and passenger cars are. Even though it has been said that you need to take off all your bags, no one did, and besides there was no place for any removed bags. Rather, the cyclists helped each other lift the fully loaded bikes, and there were scads of them, onto the train, and to stash them in the bike car. The passenger car was full, so we just hung on ceiling straps and rode with the bikes.
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2 years ago
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We found this train trip to be a super adventure, and we think other bloggers also thought it was cool. But the other cyclists on the train, mostly German, sorry to say, were so darn serious! There was no laughing, and certainly no singing of camp songs or anything like that. We felt sorry for them - on what surely will be an adventure of a lifetime, and so grim about it!
At the other end of the tunnel - Mallnitz - came something that others have also waxed poetic about - 7 km of straight down! According to the GPS, we dropped 521 meters in this distance. People with time to research out there - how does this compare with the Stelvio Pass or Mont Ventoux? Anyway, we would hate, hate! to have to cycle up this one.
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There was a town at the bottom of the big hill, but we forget its name. After that, contrary to what some bloggers felt, there was some noticeable up and down to the track, and also including some uphill gravel.
However, yes, by and large we were in a broad river valley and proceeding gently down. But it was not without incident! On one narrow but paved uphill, a car towing a trailer came behind us and snorted impatiently. If Dodie had pulled off almost into the bushes, she might have let the guy pass, but then she would not have been able to get started again on the hill. So she just kept on cranking up, basically in the lane. The impatient guy edged past me and went to take up a position breathing down Dodie's neck. So I stepped on the pedals and swerved in front of him, thereby protecting Dodie's rear. The guy then honked. Dodie responded by going a little slower. So the guy leaned on his horn and stayed leaned for minutes. I took out my camera to film him, but could not quite manage to work it back over my shoulder. Finally came a place where he could pass, and the guy roared off.
I was kind of hoping the man would stop up ahead. Why? So we and no doubt he could do some shouting. I was also thinking it would be a time to film him, and threaten to turn the file over to police, or worse, put it on the internet! But no, the guy and his dinky rig just flounced off. Much later I was thinking about it. What if in the confrontation that didn't happen I had just explained - "look the lady is old and recently injured - she could not stop for you on that hill". Such diplomacy would have been more noble, but would it have worked? No way! Also Dodie says she would not have wanted to lose her mechanic in a punch up.
We were a little crabby after the horn honking guy, and this affected our approach when we came to this route sign. Some bright light had covered up the direction arrow, and we and some other cyclists were standing there puzzling over it.
I was true that much of the remaining cycling was on pleasant lanes, or straight through grain fields. Like this - really nice!
The broad valley was formed by one or more rivers, but unlike so many others, these are not famous with us and we are not quite sure what they are.
The mountains bounding the valley remained very high, and we noticed numerous panorama lifts up to their summits. Our camera is not quite capable of showing them with good contrast, but here is the general idea:
One of the lines up a mountain was not a lift but rather a dual pipeline. This dropped down to a power plant and a reservoir. There must have been a lake up top, and water coming down could power turbines. It also struck me that this could be a pumped storage arrangement, in which power in time of surplus could put the water up the mountain, and when needed, the water coming down would regenerate the power. This is just surmise, we really did not know what this was all about.
The reservoir, however, was also obviously a boon to wildlife, as described by several poster boards, like this one:
Some of the birds mentioned are familiar and gorgeous, like the teal and the loon:
Now came the time that we and some of the hoards of fellow cyclists had been waiting for, the point where we would reach the Drau. The Drau has figured in so many blogs that we have read, and now here we were!
We set off from Mollbrucke along the Drau, in the direction of Slovenia, which is the opposite of our original plan. But we'll be back!
We rolled in to Spittal by the train tracks and a sort of industrial area, and so can not say if it has a prettier side. We came to a spot where this time, a truck and trailer were parked on a narrow lane and blocking our way. Dodie seemed ready for a standoff, but this time I was the diplomat and found a way to squeeze by. On the other side was a man and two dogs, working with the trailer. The man asked us sweetly about where we were from and where we were going, and wished us well on our travels. And the two dogs were sweet as well. In all, it was an antidote to the honking guy.
Our hotel turned out to be in a sort of ex-urban commercial area, and we never did quite find a name on the building that corresponded to what we had from Booking. The street address was right, though. We are happy here too, because the internet works, and we have free access to a coffee, hot chocolate, juice machine downstairs.
The fact that the internet works was quite critical tonight. We have been juggling places to stay in Grado and the shuttle back up to Mollbrucke. We told the people involved in those that we do not have our phones working for SMS, and we need to have email only. So just now, Shaw.ca, our lame email provider, decided to not work and to cause all sorts of inexplicable (and different) error messages on our various devices. Lots of the messages seemed to threaten that our password was wrong, which is a little weird because we have changed nothing. No matter, I decided we should go to the Shaw support web site and check on the password. I logged in to the support website and it said to "help me" "two factor" verification had been implemented and I had to retrieve a secret code they had just sent to my Shaw email. Yeah, that's the email that is not working and the reason I am on this case!!
This is the kind of thing that makes Dodie wild, and me too, but I fairly calmly said ok, we'll have to phone them in Canada. Phone them in Canada? Aren't we the people who have failed to even implement SMS on the phones we have here? That's where good internet came in, because I called them on Skype, hoping against hope that I had enough Skype credit.
Shaw support over the phone spent a lot of time trying to get my password changed, until suddenly the agent noticed a message on her screen that their system was broken and was generating the type of errors we had been receiving. There were some suggested workarounds, and one of them worked! So now we have a place to stay in Grado and a way to get out of there. Hooray for technology?
Thinking of technology, the hotel here has three of these wraparound Samsung screens. cool, eh?
What gave Meaning to Life today? The gentle conversation with the man beyond the trailer, and his two sweet dogs.
Bonus: We have some experience in mountains and with lightening storms, but we have never seen anything like what just went on outside our window. For over 30 minutes there were flashes of lightening over the mountains every few seconds. Strangely there was wind but no thunder and little rain. Now there is wind and rain, but the lightening has finally stopped. One can find examples of insane lightening on Youtube, but this one was really new to us.
Today's ride: 55 km (34 miles)
Total: 3,061 km (1,901 miles)
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2 years ago
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2 years ago
In Canada, a road designed to the requirements of the Highway Code is unlikely to be steeper than 8% (and if more than 6%, there will be a warning sign). Minor roads can be steeper—a lot steeper. But super-steep slopes are rarely very long.
2 years ago