September 26, 2011
A lot of ups and downs: It was a good day
The woman at breakfast was lovely, she had very good English and was able to answer all sorts of questions about Germany for me. She also solved the mystery of the full hotel in this unremarkable town. The town is only 60km from Munich and connected to it by train. Octoberfest is on in Munich at the moment so hotel rooms there are very expensive so people come out a bit, to pay less and commute into Munich for their beer drinking. She also warned me that it would be a very hard ride today, and it was.
We hardly saw the river all day and were endlessly up and down hills - many of the slopes were up to 16%. At one stage we had been battling away on a steep and very rough forest track for what seemed hours when suddenly we came out into the most beautiful country. There were steep rolling meadows in what looked like an alpine landscape with the lovely farm houses and everything looking perfect. For Ken his day was made when he saw a Eicher tractor behind one farm house. But that was not the end there were three more. Ken and the farmer got into deep 'conversation' (they had no common language) about their beauty as they patted them, Ken photographed them and they smiled broadly at each other.
Our lady at the hotel had suggested that we go in to Wasserburg as it is a lovely town. It is situated where the river goes in a horse shoe and all the old town is confined by this. You enter the town over the bridge then through the town gates. There seemed few tourists around which surprised us as it is such a lovely place. We poked around and had a very good coffee (2.4Euros) in an outside café as we admired the surroundings.
It was time to press on and of course our route was up. We thought we were doing well when we stopped for lunch. I had been worrying a little that none of the towns we went through were on our map (bad map!) but then the truth dawned - we had been following the wrong signs. There are so many cycle ways this is quite easy to do. The GPS seemed to be no use at all so off we went to a medium sized road we had seen sometime earlier and miracle of miracle of miracles there was a sign pointing to a town we needed to go to only 8km away. The traffic wasn't too bad so we set off at high speed and were delighted to arrive in Vogtareuth, find a bakerie for a very good coffee and the correct route.
After that we were more careful and kept on track. Our plan had been to stop in Rosenheim but when we went in they seemed to be digging up all the roads and we couldn't find the centre so on we pressed. Ken was complaining a bit by now that I was not keeping up with him and should ride faster. At the turn off to Raubling we met Christina and Gunter our guardian angels. We said we were looking for somewhere to stay and they rode with us all the way to this place, which would have been very hard to find, they arranged with the lady for a room and found out where we could have dinner. I just hope they got such kind help when they visited New Zealand about 20 years ago.
Despite our trials today it was a really lovely ride with beauty all around us.
Today's ride: 83 km (52 miles)
Total: 3,118 km (1,936 miles)
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