Kochel am See to Bad Kohlgrub - Retyrement on 2 Wheels 9 - CycleBlaze

June 27, 2024 to June 28, 2024

Kochel am See to Bad Kohlgrub

Finding art along the trail.

Thursday: Our rest day at Kochel was pretty much that. Had we been feeling more sprightly, we might have taken advantage of the “Gast Card” that we receive at check in.  It allows free bus travel in the area. 

Breakfast
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Lunch
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Dinner
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The rain sweeps through in occasional heavy showers that drops the temperature and sends us under cover, and so we end up reading our time away until early evening when the sun is warm, and we enjoy a walk along the lake shore and a paddle. Water temperature is supposed to be around 18 Celsius which isn’t bad.

We meet a young New Zealand woman who’s working with the water rafting company. She’s been here a couple of weeks and speaks German since her parents came to NZ from Switzerland. She’s from Motueka , where we enjoyed cycling earlier this year. 
A few more cyclists appear late in the evening and our space becomes a little more crowded. We plan to be off quite early though, as we’re heading to Bad Kohlgrub via Murnau where we hope to visit an art gallery.

Friday: The morning can’t make up its mind- rain or shine? No matter,  we’re up and off after a breakfast under our shelter. Tent, packed, if a little damp and bikes loaded we head back to Kochel to start on a flat open plain with cloud covered hills around lake- to Schledorf.

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The route to Murnau is well signed. We cross the Loisach as it heads north to join the Isar.  
The climb up to Murnau is a challenge, but once there,  we take a break for our picnic before visiting the Schloss Museum, which houses the  Gabriele Mūnter paintings. 

She was a founder member of Blau Reiter group of expressionists. There’s the fascinating story of the group meeting in 1930s and creating paintings, art works.  The art was saved during the war by Gabriele Mūnter, who hid them from Nazis in her own home. Another well known member of the group was the painter Kandinsky who lived with her in Murnau for five years pre 1914. Gabriele Mūnter tried to continue painting throughout the Nazi era, but had to make concessions to her art to do so. Her self portrait is most appealing and the group’s reverse glass painting is quite striking.

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We leave Murnau at 3.42pm- on train! It is a concession to our not being 100% healthy, and good value at 1euro per kilometre!
In 15 minutes it delivers us to the Main Street. From here there’s a challenging climb to our Airbnb which, as a result, has amazing views.

Our accommodation is a large three storey wooden house. We have a room with wide doors out onto a beautiful terrace. It’s sunny enough still to dry our tent. 
We dash to Edeka for the contents of a picnic dinner which we eat on the terrace. After showers we both crash. Despite the shortish distance, it’s been a long day.

Today's ride: 31 km (19 miles)
Total: 200 km (124 miles)

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Kathleen JonesI’ve just recently learned about Gabriele Münter. There was a show of her work in London a couple of years ago and I directed my sister-in-law who lived there to go for us. She sent us a calendar with her art that we loved having through the year. Thanks for stopping in Murnau.
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4 months ago
Michael HutchingYes Kathleen, we really found her story inspiring. Important things seem to happen in seemingly out of the way places.
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4 months ago