Fast forward … medical test in London (good result – we count our blessings), graduation ceremony in Liverpool, train travel to Spain (crossing the Pyrenees) to visit Chris’s mum for a week in Spain, together with the kids and their wives, train travel back to Vienna (crossing the Ahlberg Pass in the Alps) to pick up the bike.

But first, million thanks to Kathi and Wolfi for looking after Tekel whilst we were away, for getting her serviced, and keeping her Match Fit by taking her on a long ride along the Danube:

Now we are on our way home like this:

• Train from Vienna to Regensburg
• Danube cycle path from Regensburg to Kelheim
• Danube-Main canal from Kelheim to Bamberg (about 170km)
• River Main from Bamberg to Mainz (about 400km)
• River Rhine from Mainz to Hook of Holland (about 680km)
• … and then to London

(although if the news from the UK continues to get worse then …)

We are planning to be back in early/mid-September. Chris and I have been discussing whether to do the blog again. On the one hand, people have left lots of nice comments and been engaged with our travels. On the other hand, it was quite time-consuming not just writing the blog but especially finding wifi, RUNNING OUT OF DATA ALLOWANCE, and getting the connection working. In addition, I’ve been offered an exciting volunteering opportunity at the GLA when I get back, combining chatbots and machine learning, so I would like to prepare for that.

But, as we were leaving Spain, 92-year old Oma (gran) said that she was looking forward to Part Two of the blog. So that swung it! Chris and I will continue the blog, we will continue to share the postings, but we will not post each day. We look forward to posting our pictures and seeing your feedback.

Our first day back on the road will be from Regensburg to Kelheim, then starting the trip north on the Danube-Main canal.

Chris will also be posting pictures on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/christinevanduuren/

Love,

Graham and Chris

In looking back on the experience of the past few weeks Graham and I were talking about things we would have liked to describe in the blog but didn’t.

One of them is the phenomenon of the Danube sinkholes. These are places where the water sinks through the riverbed, leaving no water in the river at all at certain times of the year. That to me is a pretty mindblowing thought but regretfully, because of heavy rain fall prior to our arrival, we did not witness a drying up, only a reduction in the water level. The ‘disappeared’ water runs for 12 km underground, only to resurface as a completely different river. This river flows into lake Constanz, from which flows the river Rhine. The upshot is, for each drop of Danube water there is a sliding doors moment: either it stays above ground and ends up in the Black Sea, or it sinks, becomes part of the Rhine and flows into the North Sea on the other side of Europe.

The second is a more general observation about Southern Germany. You get a sense that there is a lot of investment in the local infrastructure. Local communities have great sports facilities, streets and parks are well taken care and everything is clean. That must give individuals a sense of being looked after (It did me). Wealth feels more shared and presumably that leads to a sense of shared well-being. Such contrast with Britain. (Yesterday I was reminded that Bavaria is politically right wing. Don’t know where to place that piece of information).

The other thing we have not written about much is the people we have met. We have not gone out of our way to do so, since we were happy to pootle along and do our own thing. Still, we want to thank people who have provided us with valuable information, lovely conversations, useful tips and, in some cases, very pleasant evenings (you know who you are).

Finally, a comment on the art in Bratislava. As Graham wrote, this is disappointing. The two more striking art experiences were the modern installations that we captured on camera in a recent blog. Both involved mirrors, with the predictable result of seeing multiple reflections of (parts of) oneself. That’s always fun. The one with the books also managed to give us a sense of being in an endless space, sideways, upwards and -more worryingly- down. Hence I was holding on to the side in one of the photos. I was genuinely dizzied by the impact of the imagined abyss.

So, the cycling has come to an end for now. I miss it already. Being with our friends in Vienna is greatly softening the blow, however. And soon we will be reminded that life in London is pretty good (if you don’t read the news).

We watched an extensive performance of Slovakian folk music and folk dance in the central square. It seemed to be performers from countries with Slovakian minorities, such as the USA and Ukraine.I’ve had a thing about East European folk dance ever since I saw a series of YouTube videos of students explaining different computer search algorithms by means of folk dancing in pairs.

We are having breakfast in the old town which is a little bit marred by a large party of British men at the next table drinking cider and gambling at 11.30 in the morning.As we were eating, a bright yellow tandem rolled past. I ran after them and took a photo. The cyclists are American. They bought the tandem in Budapest and will sell it when they get to Munich.They have got a public page on Facebook called Living Life in Tandem.Tefel the Tandem took a boat ride (on the left) from Bratislava to Vienna. We could only take her on board because she could be folded.Going upstream we passed the landing point for the last, exciting bike ferry that we had used a few days earlierThere goes the little landing craft.And this is where it dropped us aka middle of nowhere.We both felt quite emotional, finishing this leg of the trip. We were really pleased we managed to get onto the ferry. It felt a very fitting way to finish the journey.Leaving BratislavaChris looking wistfully towards the cycle path.We were picked up by Steve at the ferry terminal in Vienna, and later handed over Tefel the Tandem to his daughter, Kathi, and her partner, Wolfi, for safe keeping until we return. After having drunk a couple of bottles of wine at Steve and Angela’s house we decided that all 3 couples wanted to try the tandem.(I don’t have the photos of the others but I’ll publish them soon)

Kathi and Wolfi talked about riding Tekel to Wachau, the wine growing area we passed through a few days ago.That’s the end of this leg of the journey. It’s been great fun.

STATS

We cycled on 18 days, and had 5 rest days. 23 days in total not counting the day of travel to Donaueschingen or the extra day we spent in Bratislava. We camped every night except for 2 nights in a platform tent.

Q&A

THORNS AND ROSES

Roses

The strong, light-weight, nylon ripcord bike bag designed and sown by Chris. We wouldn’t have got the bike to Paris without it.

Special pillow case made by Chris so that you can put your down jacket and other clothes into it to make a pillow at night. Reduces duplication and ensures a good night’s sleep.

Rubber-handled pedal spanner that doubles as a tent peg hammer. Both were needed and both were heavy.

Thorns

Portable solar battery charger. It doesn’t charge sufficiently in the sun. You need to plug it in to charge and then you can charge your phones from it. I’ve subsequently seen larger solar panels that unfold like a newspaper. We need a bigger charger!

Computer cables. The charges and cables that we need to achieve our digital ambitions are almost as bulky and weigh almost as much as the entire collection of bike tools and spare parts. There must be a better way!

We bought vegan soap with the idea that it would triple up as soap, shampoo and shaving cream. Unfortunately, it hasn’t lived up to expectations.

Last night we walked around town and then celebrated the end of this leg of the trip with a glass of Blaufränkisch wine.

The other day we saw an old, red Skoda Felicia that looked like our beaten up, won’t-start-in-the-rain car.

“Oh, I miss our car!” Exclaimed Chris. Along with our children, daughters-in-law, and Bella the beautiful husky. Well, all good things come to an end.

We can still feel our legs from the long cycle on Wednesday, but we managed to walk around town today.

We walked over to the ferry office and apparently gained agreement that we can take our bike (folded) and all of our luggage on the boat. We bought tickets for tomorrow afternoon.

I’ve had some eye-opening experiences recently. Notably the National Romantic paintings in the Hungarian National Gallery, and the Baroque cathedrals of Southern Germany. We visited the Slovak National Gallery and the Bratislava Municipal Gallery today. I have to be honest, that we were disappointed. It made us speculate that all of the significant art ended up in Prague at the time of the peaceful split of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Here are Chris and I enjoying an installation playing the Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin tune “Je t’aime – moi non plus”.

There was also a fun narrow path and valley of books created with mirrors.

Actually, the helpful lady in the National Gallery recommended a private collection called the Nedbalka Gallery that we also visited. That had a much better in-depth collection. I don’t know how those things work.

A farewell to camping.

We might not use the tent again for a while, so we made sure it was clean and dry before rolling it up.

It is only about 30 km to Bratislava but we could feel our legs and the path surface was poor yesterday, so we factored in plenty of time.

Our triumphal entry into Slovakia (the sign is on the high level gantry).

It was a bit of a struggle through the busy traffic and then the cobblestones of the old town of Bratislava.

But eventually we made it to our posh hotel (booked that morning at a discount). There is no campsite in Bratislava (honest) so this was our first night in a hotel. Tefel the tandem was locked up safely in the cellar. Room number:

The first thing we both did? Had a long shower. The second thing we noticed is that we hadn’t seen any telly for a month and we hadn’t missed it. Thirdly, we realised that we hadn’t eaten anything that day – no breakfast or anything else. So then we went out for a veggie burger.

We are both happy being in a Slavic-speaking country. The Germans and Austrians who we have met have been very patient and also appreciative of our efforts to speak German. They haven’t automatically switched to English at the first sign of trouble.

Nonetheless, Slovakian and Czech are the Slavic languages closest to Slovenian. We are looking forward to seeing if we can use our Slovene. We can read many of the signs.

As I am writing this I am watching a competition of youth orchestras in the centre of town in the evening.

We had planned to take a ferry back from Bratislava to Vienna on Saturday but belatedly discovered that we could not take all our luggage on the boat. So we’ll need to figure out something tomorrow. Maybe the train. Or we could cycle back! Or else our friend has kindly offered to pick us up.

We did more than 120 km today, including getting lost and additional km from some detours!

We left the nice, cheap municipal campsite in Zwentendorf on a sunny morning.

The path along the Danube was pretty and peaceful with a good surface. We followed the river for miles. Slightly less positively, the was Japanese Knotweed everywhere along the banks.

In the middle of nowhere we came upon a bench by the river and stopped for brunch.

The countyside was lovely even though we were relatively close to Vienna. We got to Vienna at lunchtime.

We weren’t sure if we wanted to camp in a big city like Vienna so, standing in Vienna, we decided to go the extra 60 km to the next campsite. We figured that if we just kept pedaling we would eventually get there.

Unfortunately there was a big detour through an area of outstanding natural beauty. They are remaking the bike path in that area but it won’t be ready until 2020.

We needed to cross the river at the last ferry crossing in Austria. It’s quite strange because you enter through a rather posh mini cruiser boat serving coffee. But you are directed all the way through the boat and out the other side to a small quasi- landing craft that is moored to the boat. We set off feeling a bit like Saving Private Ryan. At the other side, the helmsman doesn’t moore but simply keeps the engine running pushing the craft into the jetty, and you quickly (with your heavy tandem) exit through the front.

What’s more, where you are disgorged there is absolutely nothing except a sandy path. Luckily some locals explained the route.

The quality of the path was not great after Vienna and at one stage, close to our destination, Carnuntm, we needed to push.

There are literally hundreds of windmills in this area. I suppose because they could never get away with building them in Wachau!

The path was mostly very beautiful even though we were close to Vienna. And the unusual ferry crossing was good fun.

At the campsite we were fortunate that they served (very good as it turns out) food. We drank some Rubin Carnuntum wine with this. I am familiar with that wine from my former wine importing days.

I’m not sure exactly but we are only 20 or 30 km from the Slovak border.

Graham’s menu for cycling 120 km:

Half liter of full fat yoghurt and lots of blackberries for breakfast.

Cheese sandwiches, tomatoes, salad for brunch

Three slabs of fried Emmentaler with salad and alcohol free beer for lunch (Chris “that’s definitely 1,000 calories”)

Cheese omelette, chips and mixed salad plus red wine for super.

(Fortunately, we had supper healthy food the previous night)

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 …

From Graham

Last night we walked through the village up a steep hill next to the privately owned, slightly forbidding castle built on a rock besides the Danube and the local village. We had seen a couple of people and not a single car.

Chris stood in the middle of the road transfixed by a huge flying bug surrounded by a squad of slightly smaller flying bugs. Then, completely unexpectedly, a large bus came streaming round the corner. Luckily it turned out OK.

It led to us spending the morning of Chris’s birthday looking on the web at pictures of flying bugs and going “eeehhhggg”. We think that we saw June chasers and a flying Cicada ..! (But possibly a cockchaser aka doodlebug)

Anyway, one of the reasons I had for cycling quietly yesterday was that I had decided to write a poem for Chris’s birthday I couldn’t write it down so I had to memorize it as we went along.

From Chris
Thank you all who sent me birthday wishes.

The day started at 6 am with building noise (flood defences) and is moving towards its end with a threatening, gusty wind heralding the end of the heat. The wind/storm started just as we came back to the tent late afternoon. Graham immediately started reinforcing the tent with extra guy ropes, ruing the fact that he had not put more tape around our broken pole. I tried to help a fellow camper, whose tent was actually blowing away. In between these tricky moments the day was good. Lovely card from Graham but no presents, as agreed (the whole trip is like a massive present).

In between these tricky moments the day was good. Lovely card from Graham but no presents, as agreed (the whole trip is like a massive present).
In our original planning we had somehow over-estimated how far it is to Vienna, or under-estimated how much distance we can cover. Hence we are introducing more non-cycling days, to make sure we don’t arrive in Vienna too early. Today was sight-seeing in a town called Melk.

I call it a town but basically it is an abbey with houses around it. Every time you look up from the streets, whoohoo, there is the abbey again. Big, striking and very much there. This is particularly relevant since ”the relationship between the market town and the abbey was often tense.” (quoted from a plaque on the ‘Rathaus’). You can imagine the power struggles

The richness of the abbey feels uncomfortable. There are priceless artefacts and beautiful paintings but it lacks humility (I have to own up here to my Dutch Calvinist background). The library contains thousands of leather-bound books, the church is very ornate, as we have seen so often on this trip.

It’s a Baroque masterpiece. No gargoyles!

From Graham

My take away from the Abbey visit was the amazing quality of the fifteenth century religious paintings. There are a couple of alters by Egkel and Breu the Elder which are in my view both amazingly modern and very well preserved. I suppose it’s obvious really, that the place to see medieval art is in religious institutions rather than museums.

On the way back, I swam for the first time in the Danube.

Getting in

Swimming

Getting out

(in quick succession)

Chris’s birthday celebration with regional food and wine from Wachau.

So what’s the announcement? We’ve been streaming along. So we’ve decided to extend our goal to Bratislava. We’ll see if we can cycle there, and then back to Vienna to meet our friends on Saturday 6 July