June 18, 2022
Day 67: Jenbach to Lenggries
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
We knew there would be some climbing out of Jenbach, and we prepared ourselves with an early start to avoid heat, and ate a hearty breakfast. The climb started immediately and was a bit of a shock, probably 12-15% for 4 straight kilometers, and on road.
Even though we have been coming to Europe for a number of years, some Canadian assumptions or ways of thinking stick with us, and can lead to surprises. The kind of naivete I'm thinking about is more my specialty, so I'll leave Dodie out just now. In Canada, if you climb up to little village somewhere, such as we climbed to Jenbach, you would expect it to be relatively unpopulated, and the services modest. But our hotel in Jenbach last night, with no fanfare or even much price drama, was just incredibly super. I am talking about things like the woodwork, in the room and in the corridors. It was something like spalted pecan, or other hardwood, and the materials and finishing quality outstripped even furniture that we happen to have at home. And then there was a pool, sauna, and other mystery wellness rooms, I think, on our floor. The pool was large, and incredibly seemed to be a single stainless steel tank - four feet deep, fifteen wide, thirty long. At home you might only have that for commercially making cheese!
When we came down for breakfast, promptly at seven, the breakfast room was filled with the many guests. How did they all find this place and get here? Oh yes, cars!
Ok fine, so now we climbed out of Jenbach. We had to put the last 1/2 km, it was so steep. Again, in Canada, climbing a mountain like that from a remote village would put you basically in the wilderness. So what did we find? Yes, a giant apartment building.
But that's not all. It's not even vaguely close to all! My inflexible brain was coming to grips with this one off apartment building, when we rounded the corner to confront the truth. The lake above Jenbach is the Achensee. It is just about the most gorgeous thing you can imagine, with crystal clear green tinted water and mountains standing all around. But unlike a similar lake, like Lake Louise, that we might have back home, this has a goodly amount of town and guesthouse development, ferries going from end to end, campgrounds, scuba diving, parasailers, and a paved bike path for the ten kilometers along one side.
| Heart | 1 | Comment | 0 | Link |
| Heart | 6 | Comment | 0 | Link |
| Heart | 5 | Comment | 0 | Link |
Rather than being snotty about the tourism development of the lake, we just really enjoyed being part of it. This included joining scads of cyclists on the lakeside path. On the other hand, we kind of got here honestly, by clawing our way up from Jenbach. But how about these folks in the bus, one of two loads that was just pulling in at the North end of the lake?
For about 7 km beyond the end of the lake, we continued on nice bike path, through mixed farm and residential places. Many of the houses were beautiful, causing us to remark again that we really were still in Tyrol.
To this point we could safely say the Munchen-Venezia radweg had put in a good day, with fairly safe routing and spectacular scenery. Bu that was now to change, big time.
The first salvo had us heading off into a forest, straight uphill on gravel. We were glad to be on the inside of the slope, because once again, high on a ridge, you do not want to roll.
When the time came to descend, we made sure to go extra slow. And we advised some people on the way up both that they still had a long climb and then to be super careful when they would come down the other side.
*** (We interrupt this blog entry to announce that after resurrecting itself some weeks ago, my Surface Pro 3 just died again. The nice hotel room that we find ourselves in here at Lenggries is partly implicated. The room has a bathtub, and I took a break to try it out. When I got back, the Surface had shut itself down, and will not come back. That's a big inconvenience, but I can work around it and still do the blog. Except for the fact that the photos from after that gravel mountain described above are now locked in the inaccessible Surface hard drive. I will have to rely on word pictures from here to the end of today's story!)
*** Update - it's 6:00 a.m the next day. I tried the computer compulsively - and suddenly it turned on! So in the few minutes available here, I will just pop in some of the photos that last night were inaccessible!
While we were on the gravel mountain, direction signs stopped naming the town they were pointing towards, and merely said Deutchland. This alerted us (heh heh) to the fact that were rapidly approaching the German border. That is not exactly here nor there, except that I realized our last chance for an available in Austria only Almdudler would be flying away. We decided to look out for any Almdudler outlets that might pop up.
There was one, in fact two, just before the German border. The stores had the appearance of border shops - sort of duty free-ish and selling souvenirs. The border must still have some little meaning, even within the EU.
| Heart | 1 | Comment | 1 | Link |
2 years ago
That the border did have some meaning was shown by the fact that the several kms long backup of cars on the main road was due to everyone being sort of stopped by uniformed police at the border point. They were a bit serious - one was carrying an automatic weapon, and they have six officers and two vans standing by. Readers - what might they have been up to?
We had not finished our Almdudlers, and had stashed them in our packs. We rolled by the border on the bike path thinking guilty thoughts, for no reason whatsoever.
It was after the border that a basically ok ride today turned to crap. I had a good picture of the situation, but can't access that now. Basically, the Isar radweg, which at this point is also the Munchen-Venezia, wanted us to go south of the Walchen See, in a long convoluted loop, all on gravel, down into a deep gorge of the Isar, and all manner of other - mountain bike only - delights. The alternative was to stay on the no shoulder, twisting, high speed road over the north of the lake. It was weird, because even that "official" bike route around the lake ended up on road, just a slightly different road.
| Heart | 1 | Comment | 0 | Link |
Dodie looked at the maps, at the long looping bike route, and felt we should risk the road. This is the road that, as we discussed the options, I was referring to as the Death Road. Ok, so fine then, we dove into the safer official bike route, which meant descendng on gravel, literally to a gorge. I don't quite have a photo of that gorge, even locked in the Surface, because I was chicken of going to the edge. I didn't have to tremble for long, though, because shortly we began to climb out. But in this case, "climb" could only mean "push". We pushed, and guess what - the gravel trail returned up to the Death Road. It was not planning to be up there for long, because in another few meters that official path left for another dive down into the forest.
| Heart | 1 | Comment | 0 | Link |
| Heart | 2 | Comment | 0 | Link |
As we were pushing up, we spotted four cyclists who had come along the road from the Lenggries direction, and were paused at the top of our gravel path. They seemed tempted to follow the radweg signs and come down toward the gorge, and we called to them - "No, No".
I wanted to ask them what they had just come through on the road, or if there happened to be a magic path along there, or what. Not wanting to delay them too much, I pushed harder. But 15% gravel really does not want you to rush anywhere.
Fortunately they waited, and I have a nice (inaccessible) photo of one of them poring over the map with Dodie. It turned out that if in a few more km we made the correct turn, down through a short tunnel, we would be home free.
Normally we despise noisy, typically speeding, motorcycles and there were a lot of them on the road. But we decided that at least they were on two wheels and narrower than a car. So we adjusted our attitude to slightly welcome motorcycles bearing down on us from behind!
We made it to the tunnel, and then cruised uneventfully into Lenggries. Along the way I took a photo of an info panel praising the Munchen-Venezia radweg.
After the Brenner descent and the Walchen See, we can clearly declare that the praise is a cruel hoax. We will never come this way again!
Our hotel tonight is another case where an attitude adjustment was required. We started this trip thinking that about 80 euros would be the guesthouse price for a night. But to carry on, we had to adjust that, to 120, and to 150. Tonight, our only possibility was here, for 214. It is an ok room, though it features the bathtub implicated in the Surface issue.
Tomorow, if all goes well, Munchen!
What Gave Meaning to Life today? A tunnel off the Death Road
Today's ride: 52 km (32 miles)
Total: 3,768 km (2,340 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 14 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 9 |
Splalted pecan! Thanks for that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the word spalting before, but of course I recognize the beautiful effect it describes.
2 years ago
2 years ago
2 years ago
2 years ago
2 years ago
2 years ago
2 years ago
2 years ago
2 years ago