The Danube Path! We made it!
Castles on every hill!
Day 21: First of Two Days into Vienna - Along the Danube
Wednesday July 17 - Day 21 - 50 miles - Total 820miles
The guest house breakfast was eerily familiar, as it was EXACTLY the same as the one we had had the prior day......it even being served by Granny II. Breakfast consisted of white rolls with sachets or packets of liver pate, honey, nutella, jam and butter. Also accompanied by ham and cheese slices. All washed down with lots of coffee. Good energy and caffeine boost to start the day!
The best thing about the morning was we didn't have any large hills to climb right out of the gate. This is excellent. Before, all the villages had been in valleys, which meant a climb out in the morning. This morning however we followed the valley gradually downwards towards the Danube. Yay! We paralleled the railway line and took minor roads to the town of Ybbs where we joined up with the Danube river path for the first time since we left it outside of Donaueschingen....many moons and hills ago!
Almost immediately we started to see evidence of the historic flooding which affected this part of Europe last month. Although the path was intact, it still had a fine silty covering on it in places which made for tricky handling on corners. Also the high water mark was visible above the level of the path, with lots of small vegetative debris still caught up in trees etc. The larger debris had already been removed and we did see some piles made of tree trunks and stumps etc.
Andrea Aside: It has been a very unique experience cycling through the farmlands over the past few weeks. We have been watching the crops ripen and the sunflowers grow and start to bloom. We are really looking forward to the Sunflower fields in Hungary, since in France we saw just the seedlings and in the fields of Austria they are just starting to bloom. We saw the amazing sunflower fields last time we were in this region by car, now we can not wait to see them by bike. We have seen the farmers grow and harvest their crops and now they are ploughing the earth again ready for another crop. Andrea has pilfered bits of each type of wild crop she has seen along the way (only eating things she recognizes of course). We have just moved into the apricot, peach, and plum region. The alpine strawberries have disappeared but have been replaced by raspberries and sour cherry trees (these tree produce bright red cherries that are not as sweet at the purple ones before... they look like maraschino cherries dangling among green leaves). Some things are not yet ripe, like the apple and pear trees that grow along every street and path. We can not wait to taste the next few countries... and see what their fertile land provides.
We also saw the Austrian army hard at work repairing a lot of the damage to the infrastructure...looked like a lot of other armies...the big hats were all milling around talking and drinking coffee while the squaddies were hard at work with shovels. They did have these cool 6 wheel Land Rover style vehicles though....they weren't Landies or UAZ though.....pretty sweet!
The path was 95% flat and the surface was asphalt which was good. It did get a little crowded at times, but not overbearingly so. The signage was pretty good and we are following the Eurovelo 6 bicycle route (Atlantic to Black Sea) at the moment. There were a couple of key intersections that we felt the signage was lacking and we had to stop and figure out where we were going.
This area has obviously been fought over for centuries. There is a castle on every other hilltop, which make for spectacular vistas down the river. The area is very fertile being a flood plain and there were fruit crops of every variety. Apricots are in season at the moment, and they had been taunting Andrea for hours. We finally found a couple of trees that weren't in an orchard proper, and we managed to harvest a substantial snack of apricots with plenty left over to fill Andrea's handlebar bag. The apples, pears, grapes and corn are also getting much riper, so stay tuned to this channel for future pilfering stories.
Cycling on the riverside path, there is not too much shade, so when there was a work bulilding at the riverside that provided a modicum of shade we jumped at the opportunity and had lunch in it. We were joined by a lovely father and son who were cycling from Passau to Vienna, which seems to be a popular "shorter" tour along the river. Once again they spoke wonderful English and we were embarrassed by our lack of familiarity which the local language. We had a good chat with them and then headed onwards towards our destination for the day, which was the town of Krems. This was on the northern bank of the Danube so we had to cross over the bridge at Mautern to get there.
On the way into town we happened across a professional looking bicycle shop and we finally managed to get the handlebar bag connector fixed on Bruce's bike - Yay! We also got our tires inflated while we were there - less rolling resistance is always a good thing!
The campground was only about 1/2 mile away from the bike shop and as we exited the shop we we suddenly engulfed by a hoard of yellow clad french highschooler cyclists. They were heading towards our campground too - so we upped it another gear and scooted by all of them so we could get to the campground first and stake a claim! Thankfully we made it as they arrived en masse minutes later. They did provide excellent people watching though for the evening as the teenagers tried to figure things out. Their leaders weren't much better!
There was an Aldi (or Hofer, as they call it in Austria for some reason) across the road from the campground so we got the ingredients for a wonderful chili for the evenings dinner. For some odd reason not many supermarkets sell cold beer - they sell individual beers for cheap money, but you have to be lucky to find one that will have it refrigerated. A tad depressing after a long day on the bike.
We got chatting with the lovely Dutch family in the tent next to ours. The Dutch are very cool people and we have had a lot of fun chatting with various Dutch people on our travels. They all seem to speak several languages and are very relaxed about everything. They also seem to enjoy adventurous pursuits or perhaps that is just the ones we have met.
Andre and Caroline and their two young daughters (the Dutch family "next door") were on a cycle tour. Each of the parents were piloting a 33kg tandem where the pilot is at the rear in a traditional saddle and then the child is up front in a recumbent seat. Very sweet set up - although very heavy, especially when you also have 4 panniers per bike and one of them is hauling a trailer!
We retired to bed and look forward to Vienna tomorrow!
The World is Ours!
Wednesday July 17 - Day 21 - 50 miles - Total 820miles
The guest house breakfast was eerily familiar, as it was EXACTLY the same as the one we had had the prior day......it even being served by Granny II. Breakfast consisted of white rolls with sachets or packets of liver pate, honey, nutella, jam and butter. Also accompanied by ham and cheese slices. All washed down with lots of coffee. Good energy and caffeine boost to start the day!
The best thing about the morning was we didn't have any large hills to climb right out of the gate. This is excellent. Before, all the villages had been in valleys, which meant a climb out in the morning. This morning however we followed the valley gradually downwards towards the Danube. Yay! We paralleled the railway line and took minor roads to the town of Ybbs where we joined up with the Danube river path for the first time since we left it outside of Donaueschingen....many moons and hills ago!
Almost immediately we started to see evidence of the historic flooding which affected this part of Europe last month. Although the path was intact, it still had a fine silty covering on it in places which made for tricky handling on corners. Also the high water mark was visible above the level of the path, with lots of small vegetative debris still caught up in trees etc. The larger debris had already been removed and we did see some piles made of tree trunks and stumps etc.
Andrea Aside: It has been a very unique experience cycling through the farmlands over the past few weeks. We have been watching the crops ripen and the sunflowers grow and start to bloom. We are really looking forward to the Sunflower fields in Hungary, since in France we saw just the seedlings and in the fields of Austria they are just starting to bloom. We saw the amazing sunflower fields last time we were in this region by car, now we can not wait to see them by bike. We have seen the farmers grow and harvest their crops and now they are ploughing the earth again ready for another crop. Andrea has pilfered bits of each type of wild crop she has seen along the way (only eating things she recognizes of course). We have just moved into the apricot, peach, and plum region. The alpine strawberries have disappeared but have been replaced by raspberries and sour cherry trees (these tree produce bright red cherries that are not as sweet at the purple ones before... they look like maraschino cherries dangling among green leaves). Some things are not yet ripe, like the apple and pear trees that grow along every street and path. We can not wait to taste the next few countries... and see what their fertile land provides.
We also saw the Austrian army hard at work repairing a lot of the damage to the infrastructure...looked like a lot of other armies...the big hats were all milling around talking and drinking coffee while the squaddies were hard at work with shovels. They did have these cool 6 wheel Land Rover style vehicles though....they weren't Landies or UAZ though.....pretty sweet!
The path was 95% flat and the surface was asphalt which was good. It did get a little crowded at times, but not overbearingly so. The signage was pretty good and we are following the Eurovelo 6 bicycle route (Atlantic to Black Sea) at the moment. There were a couple of key intersections that we felt the signage was lacking and we had to stop and figure out where we were going.
This area has obviously been fought over for centuries. There is a castle on every other hilltop, which make for spectacular vistas down the river. The area is very fertile being a flood plain and there were fruit crops of every variety. Apricots are in season at the moment, and they had been taunting Andrea for hours. We finally found a couple of trees that weren't in an orchard proper, and we managed to harvest a substantial snack of apricots with plenty left over to fill Andrea's handlebar bag. The apples, pears, grapes and corn are also getting much riper, so stay tuned to this channel for future pilfering stories.
Cycling on the riverside path, there is not too much shade, so when there was a work bulilding at the riverside that provided a modicum of shade we jumped at the opportunity and had lunch in it. We were joined by a lovely father and son who were cycling from Passau to Vienna, which seems to be a popular "shorter" tour along the river. Once again they spoke wonderful English and we were embarrassed by our lack of familiarity which the local language. We had a good chat with them and then headed onwards towards our destination for the day, which was the town of Krems. This was on the northern bank of the Danube so we had to cross over the bridge at Mautern to get there.
On the way into town we happened across a professional looking bicycle shop and we finally managed to get the handlebar bag connector fixed on Bruce's bike - Yay! We also got our tires inflated while we were there - less rolling resistance is always a good thing!
The campground was only about 1/2 mile away from the bike shop and as we exited the shop we we suddenly engulfed by a hoard of yellow clad french highschooler cyclists. They were heading towards our campground too - so we upped it another gear and scooted by all of them so we could get to the campground first and stake a claim! Thankfully we made it as they arrived en masse minutes later. They did provide excellent people watching though for the evening as the teenagers tried to figure things out. Their leaders weren't much better!
There was an Aldi (or Hofer, as they call it in Austria for some reason) across the road from the campground so we got the ingredients for a wonderful chili for the evenings dinner. For some odd reason not many supermarkets sell cold beer - they sell individual beers for cheap money, but you have to be lucky to find one that will have it refrigerated. A tad depressing after a long day on the bike.
We got chatting with the lovely Dutch family in the tent next to ours. The Dutch are very cool people and we have had a lot of fun chatting with various Dutch people on our travels. They all seem to speak several languages and are very relaxed about everything. They also seem to enjoy adventurous pursuits or perhaps that is just the ones we have met.
Andre and Caroline and their two young daughters (the Dutch family "next door") were on a cycle tour. Each of the parents were piloting a 33kg tandem where the pilot is at the rear in a traditional saddle and then the child is up front in a recumbent seat. Very sweet set up - although very heavy, especially when you also have 4 panniers per bike and one of them is hauling a trailer!
We retired to bed and look forward to Vienna tomorrow!
The World is Ours!
Beer... Check! Fake Pringles... Check! Pillaged bag of apricots... Check! Life is good.
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