August 21, 2021
Day 3 - now with video
Ok, that took awhile
The path from Brenner to Sterzing is really fantastic. Hardly any pedaling, incredible scenery, and actually pretty peaceful despite the autobahn and train line running through the same area. It was great until around Gossensass when the route planners seemed to have decided a couple short but extremely steep hills were in order. I adamantly disagree. I had to get off and push at one point. I’m pretty sure I would not have made it up. The path from Brenner to Sterzing is really fantastic. Hardly any pedaling, incredible scenery, and actually pretty peaceful despite the autobahn and train line running through the same area. It was great until around Gossensass when the route planners seemed to have decided a couple short but extremely steep hills were in order. I adamantly disagree. I had to get off and push at one point. I’m pretty sure I would not have made it up. When we left off, I was dealing with atm-card-gate which lasted until midnight. I got a chance to try to card out this morning and thankfully it did work. I ended up waking up for a couple hours in the middle of the night hoping a hotel would email back saying they had a spot. Nobody did though.
First task this morning was to call the one hotel near Brixen I was holding out hope for. We had some connection issues, but we heard each other well enough to determine she had a room tomorrow, but nothing tonight. Tourism department Brixen suggested trying Klausen, a bit further on. I pulled up their website and found four options. Two were way too expensive and the other was way up a mountain. That left one option. I gave them a call and they did have a room left. For €110. I asked if it was a single room and after determining that I was all alone she offered it for €80. Still expensive, but at this point I figured beggars couldn’t be choosers so I booked the room.
With that done I ate the rest of my leftover Asian take out from the night before and loaded up my bike to head to the bahnhof. With a room for the night I now needed a ticket to Brenner Pass.
When I got to the ticket office locked up my bike, probably in a not approved location, and walked into the office. I was soundly rebuked by a young guy who’s job it clearly was to maintain order. I had walked into the exit. Streng verboten. Turns out there was quite a line. I was worried I wouldn’t get through the line in time to make any train, but it actually moved very quickly. The older gentleman that hooked me up with my ticket was super nice. He has relatives in the US and wanted more than anything to know if the coins he had were still good.
I had sufficient time to patronize a bakery as well to supplement my leftover breakfast and bought a couple obstschnitte which I ate on the spot. I also bought a tomato and mozzarella sandwich which, spoiler alert, I managed to leave in the train and never got to eat. Whoops.
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The train ride was interesting. I’ve never ridden a EuroCity train. This one had a separate car for bicycles meaning I didn’t actually need to stress about being able to reserve a bike spot. I think my bike may have been the only one in there. The wagon I sat in had separate births. I’m still not clear on if I had a reserved place to sit, but some people certainly did. I ended up sharing a birth with a family with two small children. The little girl was old enough to behave, but the boy was quite young and had plenty of energy. I did have a nice chat with the mom though. She works for München public transit and is very passionate about it. I mentioned how impressed I was with the cycling infrastructure between the Englischer Garten and the Haultbahnhof. She informed me that was one of the worst areas in the city for cycling infrastructure. Compared to the US it was amazing. I’m curious what they will do to improve it.
The train arrived at Brenner Pass at 2pm. It took me about 30 minutes to get out of the station and set everything back up on the bike. I figured I had ample time. Google maps estimated my ride to be 35 miles and it my guidebook showed it as basically all downhill, sometimes very steeply. I wondered if I would even need to pedal today.
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The path from Brenner to Sterzing is really fantastic. Hardly any pedaling, incredible scenery, and actually pretty peaceful despite the autobahn and train line running through the same area. It was great until around Gossensass when the route planners seemed to have decided a couple short but extremely steep hills were in order. I adamantly disagree. I had to get off and push at one point. I’m pretty sure I would not have made it up.
| Heart | 4 | Comment | 0 | Link |
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Sterzing was atmospheric. It was also crammed with tourists. After several aborted attempts, I found a really nice Eis shop and ordered 3 scoops of Italian Eis. Delicious and perfect for the surprisingly hot day today.
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Beyond Sterzing I was less impressed with the Radweg. Between Sterzing and Franzensfest there is an unnecessary amount of hills. Every hill I wondered why it felt so hard to pedal. Granted yes my bike bags add a good extra 25 or 30lbs, but I’ve ridden plenty of hills with that much weight. At one point I checked me brake pads to make sure they weren’t rubbing. At one photo stop I happened to notice that my phone case which attaches to the main frame tube was looped over the top chain tube. When I mounted the phone case yesterday I’d noted it didn’t seem quite right. With that fixed and the chain tube free to move about, my hill climbing did improve. I think it was causing extra friction in the chain tube and making pedaling harder. I also had several climbs that were picked up by the climbing function in my gps. It tells you the length of the climb, average grade, and shows you progress with a display of the hill profile. Very accurate and helpful for morale when you feel like that hill will never end.
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For most of the ride I was very pleased with the quality of the trail surface nicely paved with mostly good quality pavement. That all changed around Franzensfest. For starters there was the poorly signed Umleitung. As best as I can tell, I had to ride on the Bundesstrasse. That’s one step down from the autobahn. Once forced into the Bundesstrasse I never did see any more signs showing where to get back off. My gps had to bail me out instead. There was at least a bit of shoulder for a decent part of it, but I still don’t like having traffic whiz by me.
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Once back on the Radweg near Vahrner See, the trail quality took a nosedive. It was so bad I actually regretted not staying on the main road. The trail went through a Naturschutzgebiet and was about as rustic as you can get. Mix of loose gravel, big pointy stones so driven into the ground that it was like cobblestones, somewhat washed out hits, and assorted other malign objects. That really slowed down my progress. There was a steeper hill in this area that I had to push up as well. My rear tire would have lost grip on the bad surface. That continued off and on until the town of Vahrn. Beyond there is was a mix of reasonable gravel and pavement.
I didn’t go into the Altstadt of Brixen. The area along the river is nice and was fairly busy with cyclists and walkers this evening. I will be back in a week or so and stay the night in Brixen so I don’t feel bad skipping past it today. Beyond brixen the path is all paved, mainly downhill, and pretty scenic. The valley in this area is rather narrow and the path often has tress either side so you don’t get a completely unobstructed view. Because of my late start to the ride it was starting to get fairly dark and I opted to put my head down and just ride. Minus the couple quick photo stops and the more extensive stops to consult maps on my hotel location. I reached my hotel in Klausen right about 8pm. Much later than I wanted. All afternoon I was thinking about how nice a pizza would be, and wouldn’t you know the hotel has a restaurant that serves pizza. I ate a large salad and the entire 12” pizza. I’m fairly close to full now. The last few days I haven’t eaten as much as I would have liked. Food-wise things should improve from here on out, and the same for my daily plans. All but one day, the next to last day, I have reserved rooms already.
I’ve now reached the part of the tour where I do a lot of day rides. Tomorrow I have a substantially shorter than planned ride to Bozen, maybe 25 miles tops, where I’ll stay for several nights and day day trips. The weather looks good for the rest of the week so I’ll flip a coin as to which trips to do when. Tomorrow I’ll arrange to rent an e-mountain bike and depending on which day I can line one up, will determine when I head for the Seiser Alm. Then I’ll arrange the other days around it so I don’t have too many days of big climbs in a row.
I think that fairly throughly covers today. While I would have liked to have gotten to my hotel earlier, I’m glad I was able to do this ride after all. It was worth the late arrival just to be able to ride from Brenner to Sterzing.
Today's ride: 43 miles (69 km)
Total: 65 miles (105 km)
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