An overcast start again and I wasn't in a great mood, it has to be said. I would love the odd ray of sunshine as it has been like this for a week or so. Still, at least it wasn't actually raining, although it did start about five minutes into my day where I stopped off for my morning coffee.
Then business as usual, gorgeous roads as smooth as silk, following the Donau until I got to the Melk. Known principally for its Abbey, a big Benedictine baroque blancmange of a thing perched high atop an outcrop overlooking the town. Famed for its massively decorated church and marble hall, I would have loved to have taken a look around because you just know it would have been off the scale in riotous detail. But it was closed at the time and I just needed to crack on so I zoomed around the sides.
Melk is another destination for the river cruise boats to dock, and there were plenty of them. Chatted to a couple of passengers and felt happy to be on a bike, out in the elements with a sense of freedom rather than having to work to a schedule of a cruise ship, even in this overcast weather. Still, different strokes for different folks and all that.
And off again with more of the same; but sameness does not equal drabness. Flying along perfect roads with a swollen river throbbing with energy is the most amazing feeling. I was pumped that I would be passing Willendorf, which I knew from my British Museum course was the location where a 25 000 year old 10cm statuette of voluptuous fertility goddess had been found. It is now in the Natural History Museum in Vienna but there was a large statue which you could visit en route. Unfortunately I had taken the wrong side of the Danube and could only spy it from across the water. I considered going back, but decided to press on as I could feel some drops of rain, and it looked like it was going to turn into a shower.
Some nice villages, especially the picturesque Weissenkirchen with the gorgeous white towered gothic church,
followed by rolling vineyards producing the famed Riesling grape.
I was a getting hungry and wished I had stopped off there to eat rather then the next tourist trap of a town, Dürnstein. However I bumped into Michael, fortuitous timing as the heavens decided to open so we took shelter in a local hostelry and wolfed down a whopping Wiener Schnitzel and a couple of beers and waited it out. After an hour or so, we off in the direction of Krems which we entered through the Steiner Tor, a 15th Century gate which was straight out of 'Frozen'. I thought Bavarian towns were pretty, but these Austrian confections were pure Disney.
Miraculously the sun burst through as I wandered around the windy streets, perfect for viewing the pastel coloured houses and recently renovated Trinity Column.
Somehow I lost Michael in the incredibly long and convoluted exit from Krems, but we were headed in the same direction of a campsite just outside of Tulln.
Conditions were perfect and I cracked on my speaker full volume and shot off at full pelt. Some distance along I spotted a guy on a bike with a fluorescent headband moving at a much more stately pace. I slowed down, got chatting and it turns out to be another Michael (that is the 3rd one this trip) who was from the Czech Republic and on a three day trip.
Always good to have company, I was happy to slow down and we cycled on for the next hour or so through some open woodland until we reached Camping Zwentendorf where we caught up with Michael.
Great dinner, great company and great beers at the restaurant there, a grand day's cycling.
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