Day 29: Reutte to Biberweir (mid-day), then Nassereith, Austria

August 19, 2015

This seems like a good time for a bit of a recap and forecast of where we are going and what we are doing. It may be helpful for the reader, and I can guarantee I can do with it as well!

We came along the Main river, which is basically a west-east thoroughfare, and after Frankfurt (at Wertheim) we hung a right and headed South. We stuck with that and crossed the other major west-east route - the Danube (though at that moment we were on a train). Still heading south, we persisted down into the bottom of Germany, at Fussen.

South of Germany at this point is Austria - the "appendage" which juts out west from the main bulk of the country. It could be that most of this is called the Tirol, and certainly Innsbruck (which is just east of where we entered Austria) is billed as the capital of the Tirol. Our game is to keep going south, and so to cross this bit of Austria and enter Italy.

The first major town into Austria is Reutte, and that is where we stayed last night. Now, standing in our way are two passes over the Alps. The first is the Fernpass. It starts somewhere south of Biberweir, which is where I am actually writing this bit from, and ends at (let's call it) schloss Fernstein (or maybe Nassereith). We are told that only supermen can cross the Fernpass unaided, so we are waiting for a shuttle bus. Later on in this post I will describe the process of getting onto this thing.

After Nassereith, there is some cycling of unknown difficulty to the town of Imst, and after that, the Reschen. That area is currently off my map, which means I don't have to think about it, yet!

Today's Story

Today's story starts with last night. We arrived in Reutte suitably tired out, as usual, and were mainly concerned at first with getting accommodation sorted out and starting the blog. Only slowly did we turn our attention to our next step - what we would be doing tomorrow. We knew it was going to be the Fernpass, and we had all the information about the shuttle bus on hand. Still, it took the hotel lady to kick start us into action. She pointed out that the shuttle bus had to be reserved, and that reservations needed to be (she said) two days in advance. She offered to phone and make the arrangements.

We looked at where the bus went from and to, and read the email that our friend Trisha had written us about it . Trisha noted that out of Reutte there was 8 km of uphill gravel bike pushing, on the way to the bus departure point of Biberweil. Trisha also said the shuttle had dumped her and Ken in the middle of nowhere, at Schloss Fernstein. This was puzzling, since the shuttle materials said it went to Nassereith. We got our phone working (actually, it decided on its own to start working) and reserved a room at Nassereith. Then we asked the hotel lady to arrange the shuttle.

The lady called and quickly made the arrangement, for today, at 4:30. We chose 4:30 because we had no confidence in our ability to make it for the earlier time of 1:30.

All this extra arranging pushed the blogging back, so the captions did not get done before bedtime. This morning we did the captions, which put us 30 minutes late for breakfast. When we showed up at the breakfast buffet, we found that Bev and Jenni, the Canadian ladies, had already mostly finished. They were keen to get going, because Bev was nervous about being able to make the 1:30 shuttle. That made us feel better, for the ladies had totally unloaded bikes.

Just as Trish had warned, the route to Biberweil started with 8 km of uphill gravel. Trish had not quite mentioned that the slopes ranged from 14-20 percent! On the gravel, if I stopped and put on the brakes, the bike would sometimes just slide backwards. I went back on steeper bits and gave Dodie a boost by pushing her bike up. My bike is much more heavily loaded, and usually I don't notice or care, but when you are lifting the load sort of straight up, you feel the difference!

8 km, no matter what it is, is not too bad, But the route was not done with us. Aside from continued uphill sections over the total 30 or so km, there were two or three special impediments. First was a slope where the gravel path had converted itself into a rushing mountain stream. That put Dodie's foot in ankle deep.

Next was a down slope of loose gravel. I came down slowly, but when I tried to stop at the bottom, my heavily loaded little front wheel just skittered out sideways. There is an advantage to the little Bike Friday. When you need to, you can quickly abandon ship by jumping off. Depending on the speed, you can jump and just keep running. So I jumped ship. No harm done.

See Reutte, and then Biberweir (circled), the Fernpass, and then Nasserreith? And slightly north east of these is the Zugspitze

It;s hard to perceive slopes in a photo, but way down this gravel slope is Dodie, struggling up!

A real drawbridge, at the Schloss above Reutte

Again, Dodie is way down there. The shot also catches a car trying to run her down from behind.

We ran into Bjorn and Julia yet again! They had had a flat, and not totally pumped up the repaired tire. So we used our slightly bigger pump to bring the pressure up.

I shot these rocks to remember to tell the tractor and rock story!

too bad the rain and mist has obscured most mountains.

This area is a typical winter playland of peaks and valleys. This map was on the side of a building housing a gondola lift.

The "alm", one of my favourite aspects of these mountains.

The bike after I had abandoned ship. No harm done, but this is not really touring bike country,

Again, it is hard to see slopes, but in this shot I am taking Dodie's bike down a hill that she declined to tackle.

The final trick for this portion of the route was somewhat erratic signage. The worst bit had us following signs for the Fernpass, and looking for any directions to the Gasthof Lowen, the place from which the shuttle over the pass leaves.

The signs just consistently pointed to the Fernpass. After the trail seemed to be threatening to climb a mountain, we balked, and asked directions. "Oh yes, no problem, down in the village - thataway - by the Church" was what we were told. It was great directions and not a moment too late. Else we would have been joining the supermen on the pass.

Gasthof Lowen, like every other building and gasthof here, was huge, immaculately clean, and warm. Warm was rather a nice touch, since the temperature had ranged from 10-12 all day, with intermittent rain. We arrived at 2:00, and had until 4:30 for our appointed ride. We wanted to stick with our gear and bikes, so we sat outside. Still, we ordered apple strudel and coffee/hot chocolate from the Gasthof, and had a waiter come out in the cold to bring it to us.

4:30 came and went, and no shuttle. At 4:40 we decided that since this was a Germanic country, ten minutes late was inconceivable. Therefore the only conclusion was that our reservation had not clicked. Fortunately, our phone still worked, and they said oh, don't know about any reservation, but we will be there in 10 minutes.

In 10 minutes a VW van arrived, towing a large flat deck trailer. The man jumped out and hurredly, roughly grabbed our bikes and stuff. He strapped our bikes on, and covered the gear with a mesh. He was really rushing around and giving us no chance to assure ourselves that the things were safely stowed.

Now here is where the facts may be a little blurred. I heard Dodie voice a concern that our brake levers were awkwardly jammed. I checked, and said 'It's ok". Dodie says she also said she felt my trigger shifter was jammed into her seat. I didn't hear that. But she heard the "It's ok".

The man then jumped in the van and we roared off at a speed I didn't know a T-4 VW could go. As we careened around corners, hanging on to any handholds, the man answered some of our questions, in a friendly manner that was out of character with the rough luggage handling and speed. The main point was that though the main road might seem cyclable, or at least pushable, there was not shoulder and much careening traffic. On the other hand the cycle track was rough gravel, and featured dangerous decents.

Just as Tricia had said, we got dumped off at Schloss Fernstein. The man said this was de facto Nasserweith, just a little bit down the road - just take the track over here, to the right.

In fact the way to Nasserreith was not at all clear, and featured 5 km more of rough track. But that was not our major problem. Rather Dodie had been right about the jammed seat, and we quickly saw that there were two serious cuts in it. Our seats are Gel ones, and with a cut, the gel oozes out and the seat is ruined! Dodie had gone through 5 or 6 seat designs before finding this one, that works for her. So this was serious.

Out on the tour, problems that can be fairly easily remedied at home can become very serious. For example, your keyboard acts up, your brake lever snaps, or your seat receives a fatal injury. It need not be a big seeming thing to cripple you. Kind of like a lion with a thorn - and then being exposed to infection or hyenas.

In this case, we unloaded much of the bikes and dragged out, first off, the official Canadian cure-all duct tape. Next came a plastic seat cover. Ironically, it was from Fahrrad Klinik, our favourite shop in Passau. The Klinik part was appropriate here, for the seat needed a "hospital" to avoid oozing to death.

We battled the gravel and poor signage and eventually rolled onto the small main street of Nassereith. And here walking along it were Bjorn and Julia! They had planned to give the shuttle their luggage and push the Pino over the pass on the rough track. But the large flat deck trailer had given them a chance to have the whole thing teleported. We think that is good, because at the other end we saw no secure place where a person's geat might have been delivered. Would it have ended as a pile by the road side?

Again, though equipped like us with camping gear, Bjorn and Julia were staying at a guesthouse. Ours was a bit farther along, so we said goodbye to them for the umpteenth time. We do expect to see them again, though tomorrow they plan to go long and finish well beyond the Reschen pass.

The photos below will show what things looked like to us today. Certainly, it is now suitably "Tirolean" in appearance. Still, a lot of it has struck me as looking strangely like standard solid, stolid, German houses with slightly different roof lines and some balconies and flowers lipsticked onto the front. On the other hand, increasingly as we have gone along, there is no denying that we are surrounded by high mountains, beautiful meadows, and clusters of attractive chalet style houses. And some of the hotels are really over the top!

Dodie too, has been slightly underwhelmed in this region. The drivers have proven aggressive and we have been on road more than we would have liked. The people, she says, do not look happy.

For example, in one stretch of perhaps 5 km, there were quite a few tractors pulling trailers of manure charging along the bike path, which was paved in this stretch, but with soft muddy shoulders. Repeatedly, the tractors charged us, and showed no sign of either slowing or pulling off a bit. so we had to hit the mud. Finally I got fed up and said I would make the next one stop and pull over. Dodie expressed her certainty that they never would. 'I may have to put a rock through a windshield", I growled. "You don't have a rock", she observed. Finally we did find a pile of rocks, but of course I was just bluffing. Later we met Bjorn (larger, younger than me) and Julia on the trail and we talked about the tractors. Bjorn said he too thought about creating a confrontation, but decided it would not be worth it. Still, at another spot a semi trailer came within a meter of Dodie, and when she screamed, the driver shook a fist at her. See - not happy people.

We are thinking that the trails we traversed today are really for lightly loaded mountain bikes. We would not recommend this for touring. Bjorn thinks, however, that things will improve as we near Italy. We have certainly read good things about the Etsch Radweg. We'll see. Right now we are just concerned about finshing the blog and resting up. We have not turned over the map, and have little idea about what tomorrow will bring. Stay tuned...

A panarama in the Lermoos area - typical of what we saw today

We found the Gasthof Lowen, from which the shuttle was supposed to leave

We have our stuff nicely ready, but where is our lift?

Steve calls to find out what is happening

On the pass, see the switchback in the road

Schloss Fernstein, where we were dumped off, just as Tricia had said. It was not obvious how to get from here to Nassereith

Dodie and the shuttle driver, obviously before we discovered the bike damage.

The path still sucks - on the way to Nassereith

View from our balcony. This if course is the Seeblick (Lake View)

Today's ride: 33 km (20 miles)
Total: 1,467 km (911 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	0
Comment on this entry	Comment	0