80 km (50 miles) – Total so far: 80 km (50 miles)
We checked out of the hotel and met Christoph, our rep from the cycle company. He showed us the (very red) bikes, gave us a brief overview of the route, left us hotel vouchers and maps then drove away with our luggage. He was bound for Bratislava to drop it off at the hotel there; we were going the same way but I have a sneaking suspicion that we may take a tad longer than him !
We filled our panniers with various things – wet weather gear, maps, sun glasses, drinks etc. and began our journey along the Danube towards Slovakia. We made good time at first, positively whizzing along the cycle paths, our speedometers registering 20+ kph.
For anyone who has read about previous trips along this part of the Danube, you will be expecting us to mention the naked Austrians that throng this part of the route. Well, don’t worry, they are still here in numbers, wandering the paths and sitting sun bathing on the grass verges – this caused some hilarity among the girls, but was treated with European sophistication by yours truly.
Soon, of course, we lost our way and arrived at a dead-end with a watery crossing of the Danube our only option. Looks were exchanged as we turned back and retraced our route about 3km. After gaining the assistance of a passing Austrian on a Scott bike, we soon found the correct route and resumed our travels. It was on this segment of the path that we over-took our only fellow cyclists.
- 1) A chap who had dismounted from his bike and seemed to be eating the grass on the verge
- 2) A man who had slowed down to enable him to be able to light his cigarette … and ..
- 3) His son
We felt VERY proud !
After an hour or so, we stopped for a much needed drink at Schonau an der Danau and rested our increasingly sore posteriors. My saddle had been worryingly wobbly from the beginning of the trip but I did manage to fix it, the saddles themselves however, where over soft and spongy and were less than ideal – oh well, cannot be helped. Also, only my bike had a bottle cage, which was rather annoying since we had been told that they all had them and had each brought bottles – still they fitted in the panniers so again, we coped (isn’t cycling touring SO hard ?)
We continued on along the very, very straight cycle path, eventually veering off to Orth an der Donau, where we stopped for a well deserved lunch.
After lunch we remounted our trusty steeds and made tracks towards Bratislava. The cyclepath was long and straight but the wind was mostly behind us and I assume it must slope ever so slightly downhill given that the Danube decides to go this way, so we made reasonable time towards Hainburg, our planned mid-afternoon halt.
We met a pleasant Austrian woman on a Specialized bike who spoke only a little English (still more than our German though) but we gathered that she was travelling the same way as us and had an equally sore bum – must be the bumpy, gravelly tracks !
We soon re-crossed the Danube over a spectactular bridge at Bad Deutsch-Altenburg and zipped along to Hainburg, our legs getting rather weary now. Deciding not to stop there, but to push on to Bratislava, we crested the hills out of the town, dodged road works in Wolfsthal and cruised tired, but content, into Slovakia and thence into Bratislava.
We meandered through the city until we found our, stunningly posh, hotel (If anyone asks in a year or two, we will probably tell them we roughed it, wild camping in an old Soviet era bunker, but for now, we admit that its The Sheraton, Bratislava). The doorman looked after our bags, the receptionist looked after our check-in, and the luxurious shower looked after the rest of us. We nipped out for a quick snack, and collapsed into our beds at 10:00pm for sleep………