Geoff Jones

Danube Bike Trail Day 8 – Linz to Melk

Posted on September 10, 2013September 21, 2013

Another really excellent 72 mile ride on a gorgeous day. Starting off on the left hand bank then cunningly in Grein using the small ferry to switch to the right hand bank and thus miss all the traffic & noise from the busy road in exchange for tranquility & bliss 🙂

Leaving Linz you pass an old ironworks and a blast furnace that looks like it is about to be demolished – just like the ironworks were I started work at Renishaw and is now an executive home housing estate!

Once again I was blessed with a few umleitungs & it was really funny seeing people take a multitude of ways before converging again. I ended up cycling across a grass field and up a rebuilt river defence. The flood in the summer of 2002 added at least 15 feet to the river level. and damaged a huge area. Although seeing the mark on a house here in Melk it was a baby flood compared to 1501 which was at least twice as high..

I just love swooshing along these gorgeous paths all on my ownsome without a care in the world making snap decisions, going wrong, dragging the bike up banks and generally just enjoying myself. Although I think I need to stop eating so much ice cream..

Tomorrow its Vienna and tonight I got a deal with Lastminute.com so I’ve booked a hotel for 3 nights 🙂 Since it’s only 340km to Budapest from Vienna.

Here’s the Strava and pictures

Danube Bike Trail Day 7 – Passau to Linz

Another excellent days biking and 64 miles on the clock, making it 719km cycled along The Danube in the first week. I make that 25% of the total Danube distance.

Today was a terrific day apart from the last 7km, maybe it would have been better to cross onto the right bank over the locks at Hagenau.

Prior to this the route was spectacular on smooth quiet paths tightly following the Danube as it wound its way through heavily wooded gorges. You have to use 3 little ferry services, but they add to the fun. Definitely a recommended cycling day.

Tonight I’m at Hotel Mühlviertlerhof (warning: music starts up!) in the centre of Linz, yet another excellent find by the Around Me app. I love that these places start serving breakfast from 06.15, South West coast path accommodation take note!

Dinner after much searching was at the really excellent Mia Cara Italian place. In facr today has been an excellent foodie day with the exquisite breakfast at Anton in Passau followed by coffee & cake at Jochenstein, then my fish & beer at Martins Rauchkuchl. for lunch.

Here is the Strava report for the day and the pictures are here

Strava_Ride___Passau_to_Lindt

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.

Today 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…

It’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