July 31, 2016
Passau to Braunau am Inn
We get in touch with our Innradweg and start the Inn River Trail.
July 31 Sunday 65kms
Passau to Braunau am Inn
We get in touch with our Innradweg and start the Inn River Trail.
Back through the tunnel, across the Donau bridge, lit up in the morning sunlight, we cycle up the cobbled streets to the Dom Platz and down the other side to Passau’s third river, the Inn. This river has its origins in St Moritz Switzerland, and we plan to follow it to the Austrian Alps and the Claudia Augusta pass- so named because it was one of the Roman access ways into the land of the Goths. For this reason, Passau, like Basel, has been another crossroads for us and starts us off in a new direction. The plan is to head south to Italy, following the Po river to Turin, though we’re a little uncertain about the best way to reach Liguria and eventually, Nice, our place of departure, from there.
The path is a mixed bag of tricky soft gravel in places and very good seal in others. The river itself is wide and looks deep with a surface that is so flat and unruffled at times that it has the appearance of a sheet of gently drifting grey concrete and it is so high it seems like an infinity pool. For all that, when you look closely, it was moving quite rapidly.
For lunch, we ascend to a town called Reichsberg which has a large and impressive Augustine monastery atop a hill with views over the locality. Many of the buildings in this region, especially farmhouses, are huge in size and one wonders who could be occupying all of the rooms. At the entrance to the monastery an old chap is belting out tunes on an accordion. His renditions of some old favourites like Roll Out the Barrel and O Solo Mio bring back memories of Ann’s dad Bob with his party pieces.
The afternoon continues along the river, wide and full with a number of hydro stations. We figure that we are probably in Austria by now since the border is formed by the river. At one point we note a long stream of traffic waiting to clear what seems to be border control of some sort and ate relieved that such things don’t affect cyclists.
Evening finds us at Braunau am Inn. There is a hint of drizzle in the air and no camping available, so we settle for the Hotel Post, a large four storey hotel in the main drag that has once been something more than it is now, though it still retains an olde world charm and has a welcoming receptionist. As with other hotels, they ask us to bring the bikes in the front door, over the carpet and to leave them off the entrance way with the others, which belong to a German family we had met along the way. The Post is rather a lumpen hotel with dark heavy wood furniture and panelling. There is a curtained off alcove on the landing outside our room behind which, my imagination tells me, all kinds of horrors might lurk. But the room is spacious and comfortable and the bathroom has a deep bath.
We brew up in the room and Ann put together a marvellous Greek salad. Braunau’s claim to fame as the birth place of one Adolf Hitler has been tricky to deal with, but the authorities have chosen a clever and appropriate way to negate ‘Hitler Tourism’ by placing a stone from Manthausen concentration camp in front of the building stating the facts. We watch Rossini’s ‘William Tell’ opera on TV- sung in Italian with German subtitles, it somehow made sense because of the wonderful performances.
Today's ride: 65 km (40 miles)
Total: 2,339 km (1,453 miles)
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