We set off on a sightly accelerated itinerary with the aim of reaching Bratislava. The first small problem was that the brief but intense storm last night had left a lot of tree debris on the cycle path. At one point, a tree that had fallen across the path had already been chopped up and cleared away. But still we needed to go more slowly.

We took a little ferry across the river at one stage and we very surprised to find an Olafur Eliasson (he of the Weather Project in the Tate Modern) on board. It is a pitch black room with a camera obscura showing both banks. Here’s the ferry:

We traveled on another interesting ferry too. It uses no power while crossing the fast flowing river. It is attached by a steel cable to a high level cable strung across the river from one bank to the other. The captain steers the ferry diagonally into the stream, and water pressure does the rest. You can see the cable spanning the river above the hill tips in the picture:

We saw plenty of evidence of the tiered vineyards of the renowned Wachau wine growing region (we had been drinking that last night …):

But suddenly the steep rocky sides of the Wachau were gone and the Danube was huge, in man-made dykes again. Chris said it was starting to look”a bit full of itself”.

Sometimes the path was next to a busy road today. But for much of the trip it was either going through vineyards in the fertile Wachau, or silently following the tow path. Which was lovely.

We did over 60 km today and hope to camp tomorrow in a site in the centre of Vienna …