Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

Category: travel blog

Danube Bike Trail Day 6 – Tegernheim to Passau

Well that’s all 595km of Book 1 done and dusted!  that only leaves books 2 (320km), 3 (340km)  & 4  (1600km) to do or  2260km (1412miles)  left on The Danube. Interestingly I’ve already biked 2338km, so about half way from Cambridge to the Black Sea, the long way around , not the direct route.

IMG_4323Today was gorgeous! spinning along smooth bikeways with just odd bits of gravel track and no roads (of course Germany bans trucks on Sunday’s). I did the 90.6 miles in good time helped by a tail wind and flat roads. Was lovely to see all the dads with their young kids learning to do distance biking on the gorgeous paths, like me 60 years ago 🙂

I’m quite liking Passau, my room is enormous, the place has no name, I just saw a phone number in a window :-). The owner recommended the pizza place  behind the church where I met Werner a fellow 47er whose interest is doing up Ferrari’s and MGa’s etc. He confessed to having a push bike which he hasn’t ridden, although he looked pretty fit to me 🙂 Maybe we can get him biking in Cambridge…

IMG_4348It’s great to see the huge boats, carrying coal, vast numbers of new cars, containers and of course passengers  on The Danube now and the size of the river locks are humongous, English canals seem so twee in comparison. Keep thinking wicked thoughts about bribing a captain to take me & the bike back to the North Sea once I’ve finished 🙂

Tomorrow is Austria and apparently 3 have scrapped roaming charges there, although how you really know that, is going to be a challenge to work out! The forecast doesn’t look to good either, rain every day for a week 🙁

Here is the Strava and today’s average speed at 12.4 mph over the 90 miles is the best yet, ignoring the mega downhill from Les Gets to Evian 🙂

Strava_Ride___Tegernheim_to_Passau

The photos are here 

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

Danube Bike Trail Day 3 Ulm to Schwenningen

Today was a late starter after a late night on the computer and a totally yummy breakfast at the Leo Mar Hotel. I decided to experiment returning my PET bottle, all you do is put the bottle in a machine that scans & if it is PET crushes it and gives you a 25cent printout against your next purchase. This makes the cost of 1.5litre of fizzy water for £0.16 🙂

IMG_4123The ride took me through the cathedral square and then along The Danube now a fully fledged wide flowing river, although the only lock I saw could only take UK style narrow boats. I started to flag so popped into a beer garden in an orchard. A bit like The Orchard except for beer barrel German men knocking back pints at 11am.

I had a mega green salad for lunch which I couldn’t get through 🙁 in yet another beer garden.

Interestingly the distance to the mouth has started to be shown on big board every few hundred meters, first one I saw said 2561.2km to go…

 

IMG_4151Then as I was cycling up a small hill at 14.07 in a park outside Dillingen disaster struck!! The jockey wheel assembly on the rear derailleur snapped off and embedded itself in the spokes making me stop abruptly and only just unclipping my pedal in time. Inspection revealed it was damaged beyond repair plus it had broken two spokes.

What to do next? First thing is to form a conference with anyone passing! I was told there was a repairer in Dillingen. So out came the tools to remove the damaged bits  and cut the broken spokes off. I walked into town in 10 minutes to find the excellent but very busy Top Bike Brachem shop who told me to get a coffee and come back in an hour. So amazingly at 15.48 I was back on the road! in my new cycling shorts. I asked the owners if they knew anywhere local to stay.

They recommended the Schloss Kaltneck in Schwenningen and awesome it is too 🙂 the dinner tonight was excellent and my room is great.

So all in all a very lucky day. Mileage today is 49.8 but that includes walking around Dillingen. With a total since leaving Cambridge of 1257 miles (2011km)

The photos are here

Strava is here:

Strava_Ride___Ulm_to_Dillingen