Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

Category: Personal

Danube Bike Trail, Day 10 Riding – Vienna to Bratislava

Stunning bridgeI woke up to pouring rain, so luckily it wasn’t an early start. By the time i had to leave to collect my bike from the repairers the rain had eased off a little.

Excellent news on reaching Bike7, the bike was all fixed the shop owner, in jest (I think) offered for me to run the shop whilst he pedalled around Europe 🙂

It now looks as if the the Wahoo SC cadence/speed bluetooth device is kaputt, I replaced the battery but all to no avail, so that was a 5 minute wonder 🙁

Bit of a nightmare leaving Vienna through crowded pedestrian areas over slippery cobbles & tram tracks, imagining bent wheels. I eventually made it over the canal & river bridges and onto the cycleway, which was so smooth and so glorious I missed the turning and ended up at a dead end then having to cycle a couple of miles back and  go through the forest of petrol/JET fuel holders to reach the main path into the National Park helped by a glorious tail wind 🙂 & just a few heavy showers to contend with.

Derelict border postI eventually made it to the derelict border post, which is what our border posts would be like, if only the UK had signed up to the  Schengen  Agreement, it always seems to be that the UK opts out of anything that would make life simpler.

Then it was over the huge, but very shaky bridge into Bratislava. I totally forgot about lack of internet been so used to free roaming on 3 in Austria so didn’t use AroundMe. However, The Hotel Devin loomed in front of me, a real **** place, after a bit of negotiation I got a magnificent  room for €80 which in some places in the UK gets you a b&b. This place has a Spa Centre with affordable massages and the most incredible breakfast to date & to top it all free WiFi with 3MB upload rates 🙂

The weather looks good today so I will explore Bratislava with one of Emily’s au-pairs from 13 years ago.

In all the messing about with the cadence device I forgot to switch on Strava. But the etrex recorded this track.

vienna_to_bratislava

adding another 52 miles to make a  total of 1,674 miles biked of which 649 miles is along The Danube.

The pictures are here

 

 

Danube Bike Trail Day 9 – Melk to Vienna

Thankfully the overnight rain had stopped although the temperature is really dropping now & I had my first white fingers of the tour. I did the 76 miles from Melk to Vienna staring with a climb out of Melk before a steep descent back onto the Danube  which today was squashed between hillsides covered in vines and fields of orchards. All very pretty and as a reminder that the Danube is not always so placid all the villages were surrounded by 1 metre high concrete wallls with spaces to slot in metal barriers when the river rises.

Water turbine housingOne of the hydroelectric plants had displayed a water turbine housing, enormous just look how tiddly my bike looks! Bit see the power it generates . 39,000 kW from a 14 metre head of water! There were two more coal/oil power stations closed down as well. With one of them proudly displaying on a LED display its solar generation capacity, it was  showing 84kW or 0.2% of the water turbine!

I saw several cruise ships mainly going up river, none seemed very busy, so I guess the season must have ended.

I eventually reached Vienna making  me 1/3 of the way down the Danube, I passed the 2,000km to The Black Sea marker today.

I think the battery on my Wahoo bluetooth cadence sensor has packed up so the Strava data is now limited to GPS & the heart rate monitor.

Strava_Ride___Melk_to_Vienna-2

 

The pics are here 

Today after biking 2,678km I have given myself a couple of days off in Vienna, although I confess to doing a lot of sleeping today. in The Hotel Anatol

However, I did go out and buy some new Adipure V22625 lightweight running shoes to replace the Saucony ones. Laufsport is totally dedicated to running situated on the first floor with only a discrete door & bell it was a world away from any UK high street sports place!

I also took a look at  the Hammam but it was ridiculously expensive so I will wait to Budapest or maybe Bratislava.

Danube bike trail Day5 Ingolstadt to Tegernheim

An excellent days cycling . Mainly on gravel paths along the bank of The Danube , the days highlights including a pendulum ferry across to Eining, a ride on a motorised punt through the amazing Jura limestone gorge at Weltenburg and for something totally different listening to a group of guys singing Schubert in Weltenburg Abbey.

I left after another excellent breakfast & determined to stay on the river banks today, so I started by ignoring all the bike signs and headed for the river – where I ended carrying the bike down the steps 🙁 but once on the gravel path it’s so much better than zig zagging along streets. I bumped into my German friends again, as they were having a banana break. I stayed with them and with their help found the ferry at Eining to get as across to the right bank.

Lunch, with the best brown beer ever, was at the splendid Weltenburg Abbey, I shudder to imagine at the money the monks are making with the restaurant franchise, The abbey itself is totally OTT and I loved that the designer Cosmas Damian has an effigy of himself peering from the dome,  a fun guy. A really moving experience was listening  to the group of  men singing Schubert in the perfect acoustics of the building.

My German friends had found out we could rent our own punt to take us through the gorge rather than the monster boat. (the first large powered boat on The Danube)  A great deal too. at €6 each.  Still marvelling at the free climbers going up the vertical limestone cliffs.

At Kelheim it was time for a sad farewell to the Germans as they headed back up the Rhein-Donau canal whilst I continued down the Danube. I made it to Regensburg in good time but the two hotels I found I went in didn’t gel with me so I continued on to Tegernheim and the Gasthouse Goetzfried and yet another bizarre  internet login system. for a pathetically slow connection.

The GPS says 58.8 miles done today. I switched of Strava in Regensburg, once again it failed to pick up the heart monitor or the cadence stuff.

 

The pictures are here

Danube bike trail Daay 4 – Schwenningen to Ingolstadt

With great difficulty I left my bed at 8am to enjoy the breakfast. The Schloss Kaltneck in Schwenningen  is probably the best bargain of all time, when I left the final bill was €60,60 including €6.38 of taxes. That was for b&b, two course sumptuous dinner and a litre of beer. You don’t get that on the South West Coastpath.

The route today had 3 pretty tough climbs plus a lot of it was alongside roads away from The Danube so not very pleasant. Outside Neuberg there was yet another umleitung,  how councils world wide love digging up streets & putting in cobbles, slabs etc . I glanced at the Open Street Map in the Gaia app and noticed a path through the woods to the river 🙂  so much better negotiating branches & rocks than street pavements. So thank you Steve Coast for creating Open Street Map an amazing achievement.

I met up with the two German couples from Nuremberg (if you are reading this then please leave a comment) for quite a while, through them I learnt that two beer gardens were shut so we ended up  in the carpark at EDEKA an excellent food supermarket.

Tonight It’s the Hotel Anker in the centre of the town, I collapsed on the bed only to be woken by a loud hailer from some guy ranting in front of the NPD bandwagon.

Today was 55 miles at a sub 10mph speed, so I am tired!) Making it a total of 1,312 since leaving home.

Here is the Strava:

Strava_Ride___Schwenningen_to_Ingolstadt

and pictures here