EuroVelo Day 29 - it's All About The People

 Feldkirchen to Mauhausen - 63km 38miles

29 Sep, 2023

EZ Ridin!Born To Be Wild/Mild. Avalon-esque.... flat, downhill, few shenanigans! What could be better!?

Visited the very lovely and absorbable town of Linz. Great coffee, lots of patisserieincluding Lunz Cake.... and then we found out the joys of meeting lots of great people with wide experiences!

Joe&Sonia were quite worldly wise people. He an after sales representative for a company the builds, of all thing, rubble crusher for demolition work and is a keen cyclist that has cycled to Greece in raging heat, and England in almost unrelenting pouring rain. His England trip was to visit his cousin who was of the many wives of the infamous polygamist Rabii Philip Sharp. Phil had his hareem in a farm down somewherenear Battlenear Hastings. He died four years ago at his home in ..... I wonder how many loads of cash he inherited from all those wives.. leave it to say Joe's cousin has since returned to Austria, having been pretty much been cleared out of her cash.... all rather sad! Sonia his wife is a proper Anglophile, loved QE2 and all things Royal and even has a cat named Miss Marple

Nicolai, Daniel and Tony are proud Serbian Gypsies!! We discussed Paul&I's origins and purpose and they generously offered some of their meal!! We discussed their purpose of which was transporting vehicles to Wien for Nickolai's Uncle, Daniel's Brother car business. We discussed Gypsy persecution over the centuries, post WW2, and more recently at the hands of Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic in connection with a book I read about a young man that was so inspired by the Nuremberg trails that he applied the same vim&vigour to the Balkan War aftermath! They offered more lunch, and we laughed and become friends for sime time. What decent, warm, and generous people they were! I hope their plight eases with time!

Lastly comes Karl into the picture.... after passing us on a Bianchi road eBike he flagged us down right outside our campsite for the night. I noticed he was wearing a T Shirt for the steel company I had spied some 15 miles up the river....  we then descended into a discussion about steel production for 20mins! He then told me about a book he wrote called 'Born to be Mild'... my short investigation makes Karl out to be Karl Berger.... seems that Karl Berger is a world famour steel.manufacturing consultant!!

Cheers Guys for the Craic!!

Doug&Paulk

EuroVelo6 - Day 28 - Donau Loop zee Loop

 28 Sept '23 - Vilshofen to Feldkirchen an der Donau 104km 64miles

Away about 9am this morning making for coffee in Passau 24km away. The going to Passau was gently rolling, but once we hit Passau everything changed. In fact, everything changed about 5 times today!

1- to Passau 20km - gently rolling @ 17 km/hr countrified trails.... last of the very frequent large power generating hydroelectric dams here

2- Passau + 40km - dead flat to -1% @ 25km/hr wide river/roadside trail... river cruise ship territory

3- 60km to 70km - Hilly roadside trails as riverside too inaccessible as banks becoming rocky and erratic, but wildly scenic.... until....

4- 70 km to 95km - Loop Zee Loop Riverside trails so beautiful that they are almost beyond description! Sharp sided tree covered slopes often on both sides of the now lazily meandering 'semi retired' Donau

5- 95km to Finish - Dead flat Austrian farmland, but winds still allowed 25km/hr!!

Camped out on a very beautiful swimming lake in Austria! Outdoor open shower (😳......🤣🤙), but it had fully equipped loos and WHBs!! Dinner was a variation on an old Mother Bergson favourite of Ham, Leek&Cheese sauce paired with alcohol free Claushaler beers! WTF....?? All 5🎇 !

We met a couple of really nice Czech guys this afternoon cycling from Passau to Bratislava! Pavel and Jonso... Paul&John.... they simply couldn't imagine how we were doing what we were! Bless them, they said we were an inspiration to them as Ben Goodyear was to so many of my contemporaries at 'The Lazy K!! It feels deeply rewarding to have some 37 years old guys show such profound admiration for what can be done by some 60 somethings..... as I always say, if the mind is willing the body can be dragged screaming and kicking to the end...but no more.... it seems to always be the case.... so I am most anxious to see what the body says at the end if this adventure!!🤔

More about the river..... semi retired?? You ask.... well yes, the frequency of power plants has dropped from every 8 to 10kms to now, almost 40kms. Passau marked the end of the muscley Donau, and now she's gentler and more preoccupied with the leisure industry vis-a -vis cruise ships. Certainly the surrounding countryside remained quite challenging but the the lady (River Donau) herself has taken on a aire of gentle sophistication of late. Starting at 671m AMSL, we are now over 700kms  downstream and she is now flowing quite gently at c. 300m AMSL, still with over 2,100km to go, she may yet become even more gentle, and retiring! And I like to think that I do know 'Retirement' as one knows a 'Gute fruend'!

#LuckyToBeBornToBeWild

TTFN

Doug&Paul

EuroVelo Day 27 - incredible Beauty as we head South

 27 Sept '23 - Worth to Vishofen an der Donau 97km 60 miles

Half Way Day for me! Yes, today marks 'Half Way Day' for me from England!! Paul's ½ Way Day which is our EuroVelo6 half way shall be in two days time!

Kind if hard to believe, but it gets easier to believe as each run between rest days develops. Churning out multiple 50+milers does take it out of a couple of old guys! 

Great views of some really important Danube Bank upgrade work today. I got the lowdown on the B€20 project from some helpful environmentlists, Tomas and Selina(!) en route, and also from the Deggendorf towns people in the pub!🤭

The work is to prevent a repeat of the terrible flooding of 2013 (climate change effects??), but it is also addressing the urgent habitat regeneration demands of the environmental community for all the wildlife that has been displaced since the Danube 'Canalisation' works after WWII. It was quite a sight, and good to get the first hand story.... also humbling to see the extent to which the Europeans are addressing the effects of Climate Change, and Environmental issues as compared to governments closer to home! It becomes quite apparant that without properly employed taxation a country will fall behind it's neighbours in the infrastructure domain, then the capital investment domain, then the employment domain..... but it's handy as you can then always blame the oppostion.... watch for it, it's not long off now!! Political rant over, point made! Thanks

On to our overnight spot and my first swim in the Danube next to a Kazakhi guy fishing for his supper. He caught two healthy looking fish during my short 5min swim..... the water was very chilly indeed!!🥶

Dinner was Thai Prawn Curry a la Paul, with Brussel Sprouts and a German Chardonnay! A pre-dinner drink of a fine Köln beer was provided by a very pleasant Stefan and his wife who were both most interested in our quest. 

On we go towards our next Rest Day.... we have Vienna (Wien), Bratislava and Budapest to choose from although I am thinking the sooner the better!!

Doug&Paul 😎😎

PS - Caption competition for the picture of me on my bike!!🤣🤙

EuroVelo Day 26 - Of Mice&Men!😳

 Neustadt to Worth an der Donau 92km 54miles

Peddling was not quite as easy as yesterday... funny how day to day body chemistry can affect how the way you feel! But indeed we did have considerable more small and ups in terrain and we were always on the look out for 'opportunities' shall we say.

We witnessed what has got to one of the No. 1 gems on the rivers. The gorges at Kloster Weltenberg. Now a drinking hole and hotel for tourists, it was once hallowed grounds for the devout. The stretch of river is incredibly beautiful and thankfully we were early enough to enjoy the beauty without a single tourist as we were there early enough in the day! The climb out of the canyon and the descent to the next town were epic....19% up... 55.7kph down!

'Of Mice&Men' should probably read, 'Of Rodents&Men'. You see, I found the contents of my backpack had been plundered in the night! Walnuts and Figs completely cleared out and wrappers strewn about the place....Uhh, mice I thought til I noticed the enormous hole (4" in diameter ) chewed, torn, ripped, call it what you will, in the inner liner of my tent tent about 8" from pillow! How pleasant I thought.... til I realised it probably wasn't a mouse but a water vole or even perhaps a rat!! No harm done though, and my bag was not damaged, but I did empty it gingerly in case the blighter was still inside, perhaps sleeping off his over satiated state!🤔

Regensburg was our gem for today, and as tge river approached it we saw some of the most beautiful canyoned sections. We went past a hotel that once must have been a monastery. It has been flooded many times over the last 250 yrs with 5 of the 9 marked high waters in the last 30yrs!!🤔

Regensberg through its contrast at us straight away with smoke pouring from one of the city's most important monuments....the Wurstl haus cooking Wurstl for 1000's of people every lunch time. So in congruence to see such a sight in a city centre, reminded me of the Dinosaur Ribs joint in downtown Rochester NY.... a tin shack churning out the best ribs for a 1000miles, and enough smoke to set off the smoke detectors in Syracuse! We went for the higher capacity option of a kebab for our Regensberger lunch!!

Wurstl 

Curry

Campsite cold shower