DAY FIFTEEN: RIVERS GALORE

Day Thirteen (Neuburg to Landshut) Daily Distance: 98.48 kms

Day Fourteen (Landshut to Passau) Daily Distance: 121.13 kms

Day Fifteen (Passau to Linz) Daily Distance: 105.39 kms

Total Distance: 1436.27 kms

We were met with another fantastic day on Day Thirteen. The English (and Dutch) rain is now a distant memory; clouds are one thing that were entirely missing from the German portion of our trip. Yes, we have finally left Germany ... on Day Fifteen ... although as we remarked to each other every single day until today, “this must be a bloody huge country”. It took only days to cross England and then The Netherlands, but the German-Austrian border seemed to be constantly moving East, away from us...

As mentioned in the previous post, Day Thirteen promised us a relaxing day by the Donau. For those that may be confused, that is the rather large river (which we call the Danube) that starts in the Black Forest of Germany and runs for 2,872km through 10 countries before draining into the Black Sea ... near where we are heading. However, at the last minute we decided to instead head south, following roads for the morning, then climbing up out of the valley, and descending down into the next, through which the Isar river runs. By contrast, the Isar river starts in the Austrian Alps and runs for only 295km before pouring into the Danube. This river is very familiar to me, being the one that runs through Munich – but we didn’t see any mechanical surfing on it like you do in the Bavarian capital! We missed something potentially more exciting, though, as on entry to every town we passed were big signs for the:

hmmm???

Long gone are the (now) famous apple trees, being replaced by hops, hops and more hops. Unfortunately this abundance of hops doesn't equate to a river of beer, however. It’s very easy to recognise given it’s tendency to hang vertically, and because it is harvesting season we often shared the road with monstrous tractors slowly carting tonnes of hops back to their home base for ... crushing / shelling / peeling / soaking / extracting / fermenting / drying (anyone know what you do with hops? or is there some magical process that just produces beer? probably...)

We stayed in Landshut which I wasn’t too fussed about (like you aren’t) ... until we stayed there. I am now slightly embarrassed to admit that I’d never even heard of the place because it was that lovely. We stayed in a very authentic Gasthof by the Isar river, and across the river from us was Landshut Old Town with a long cobbled street full of colourful shops, cafes and restaurants. At the end of that street was a huge Cathedral, above which sat a grand palace on top of the hill. And it probably didn’t hurt that it was a Saturday night and so was quite bustling with energetic, good looking locals everywhere.

Day Fourteen was all about re-finding the Danube, as we travelled down the Isar until the two rivers met. Given it was extremely fast-flowing, we considered finding paddle boats to speed things up – it’s not cheating as long as you’re still pedalling, right?! We stopped for the compulsory daily ice cream (although I have recently withdrawn from the ice cream club, not able to keep up with Alan and his mates) but on this occasion the result was disastrous – we found a huge, absolutely packed gelateria only 5km from our destination, but it took 45 minutes for their order to be delivered to the table, by which time we were all impatient and Alan was almost wasting away!

Mt Whippy with Mr Whippy...

I would say that this is where our day started going downhill, but actually the opposite would be more accurate: not only did our last 5km quickly turn into 20km after we found ourselves on the opposite side of the river to all the towns, and therefore accommodation venues, but to make matters worse we met the largest hill (read: mountain) of our trip so far just before arriving in Passau, the German-Austrian border city. It is definitely worth documenting that this thing seemed to go on forever, and at a very tortuous gradient. At times we genuinely believed that we would be camping halfway up the mountain, in the woods, that night. Thankfully at the top of the mountain we reached a lovely Gasthof in the outer suburbs of Passau. The lads were quite fond of Frau Gruber who served us our dinner, and they even cheekily tried to ask her if she knew what the Titty Twister Party was all about ... she bashfully played the "I-don't-understand-because-of-language" card... ;)

The positive of this all was that we had an epic descent this morning, where for the first 7kms we barely touched our pedals as we cruised into the centre of the city to where - surprise, surprise - three rivers meet: the Danube, the Inn (the most important tributory of the Danube, which lends its name to Innsbruck, and on which I've rafted many times) and the Ilz (on which I've never rafted, and about which I know nothing at all).

Day Fifteen finally marked the beginning of what will be a long Danube adventure. We crossed the German-Austrian border quite early in the day, and so just had to stop for our first authentic ‘Apfelstrudel’. Well, three of us had that and Jim chose a chocolate cake that looked deadly. Alan was dying to try a small piece but when Jim was not at all forthcoming their friendship became strained – they did talk again today but it’s certainly not been forgotten by Alan at this early stage! After his disappearing act the other day, Jim has now been told that he’s on his second strike... stay tuned on that one!

The scenery was quite strange today: for most of the day we had the most fabulous smooth, wide, straight cycling path (it reminded me a lot of The Netherlands) which was so close to the river and therefore had stunning views (see below), at other times we had small gravel paths or had to share with cars on the road.

Danube / Donau

Linz has impressed us all more than we expected – we are staying very close to the centre of the city and enjoyed dinner tonight at an Italian restaurant where the pizzas were half the size of our table! I had Pellizzoni pasta for, I think, the first time with a very nice creamy tomato sauce and three varieties of mushroom which I forget the names of... and as I type everyone has settled down to watch Andy Murray presumably butcher yet another chance at a Grand Slam. We’ll see. Not that I care, really, since both the Swans and the Raiders had big finals wins this weekend – as most of you can imagine, the smile has barely left my face!