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The route today consisted of a steady climb to Resia/ Reschen, a small tourist village at the top of lake Resia, almost the highest point before descending down the Reschen pass on the other side. We only did 38 km, it was good to be able to take our time on the uphill bits.

It was still cool today, but more sunny, with mountain views even more stunning than the day before.

The first town we reached was Glurns, only around 8 km into the ride. It is a stunning walled 16th century town. We circled around a bit admiring the old buildings before continuing on our way.

We had our first long uphill slog (alongside the road) after Glurns. Here is the view on the mountains looking backwards.

From here the cycle path diverged completely from the road, still climbing steadily through alpine fields. It was very windy due to the openness of the terrain.

The wind abated a little once we got into a little valley. We continued to work hard, just about all uphill. The scenery remained stunning. We enjoyed pausing to say hello to some cows lolling in their field with bells around their necks.

At around midday I felt my energy level reducing and we stopped for some yummy dark chocolate and hazelnut clusters.

We had a slight descent down to the lake, which has a dam wall at it’s southern end. The cycle path took us over the dam wall to ride on the western side of the lake.

Kris found some remnant snow, at the bottom of a ski run just before the Resia town. Skiing is clearly the main tourist activity here.

We reached Resia at around 1.30pm. The town was very quiet.

We found the supermarket was closed until 2 pm! We find this throughout Italy – lots of shops close for a couple of hours over lunch. The coffee shop was also closed! We decided to wait and shop before going to our accommodation. Once we got into the shop we may have gone a bit over board buying lots of treats. We had to buy for breakfast as well, as that is not included in the accommodation.

We have a whole apartment here – it is quite big and great value costing around the same as hotels elsewhere. It has comfy sofas, a balcony with lake and mountain views, and a kitchen! I made a pasta meal and in the end we had more food than we could eat.

The temperatures were around 0-1 degrees Celsius when we awoke this morning, but it was sunny and clear and it looked stunning outside. Inside was beautifully warm – they really know how to heat their homes in these alpine areas – you walk around inside with a T-shirt.

Today’s ride was 64 km, a lot of them downhill, completing our crossing of the Alps at the Reschen pass. I was excited and a little apprehensive.

I was wearing almost all my warm clothes when we left, but it was not that bad. There was still a headwind, but not as strong as on the previous two days.

We were only a few km from the Austrian border – after a little up and down on the bike path. The crossing was an anti-climax as the bike path just went behind the border posts. There wasn’t even a sign to say welcome to Austria.

From here on it was all downhill on the other side. The first little town was Naunders and it even had a castle!

Eventually the bike path ended and we were pushed back onto the road to go down the Reschen pass proper. Most other cyclists do this route in the other direction and take a shuttle bus with their bikes up this part of the pass.

It was fine – not much traffic and all drivers very considerate. It would have been a different experience going up through the tunnels. The most adventurous part was a whole series of short tunnels (some open to one side). We found a side path that skirted around the first one, featuring the Tank Garten or graveyard for old tanks – some from the 1940’s.

The rest of the tunnels, we had to go through with the traffic. This was a little scary for me – we put both red lights on the back of my bike (I ride behind Kris) and we both had our hi-viz vests on. The visibility in the tunnels was good, but is still feels bad to be in a confined space with cars creating a roar behind us. Our timing was lucky as we did not encounter a truck in the tunnels. There were amazing views in between the tunnels – we seemed to be right up against the sheer cliffs in a cleft in the rock.

It was a relief to find the cycle path on the other side again – really easy now and mostly downhill.

I asked Kris to stop at Tosens as I felt my blood sugar getting a bit low and I had a headache (from the cold wind on my face? – Headaches while cycling is unusual for me). A street thermometer display announced the temperature to be 8 degrees. We found a coffee shop and both had coffee and cake, and then a second coffee. The proprietress was very friendly and we had a good chat. She has never had customers coming from the Italian direction before. She also said that last year in mid May they were swimming! So this cold is unseasonable. The warmth of the shop and treats revived me well and I felt fine for the rest of the ride.

The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful. There were a couple of stretches of gravelly road that were a bit harder, but most of the route was on dedicated bike paths.

Landeck is a large attractive town we passed through just before our final destination at Zams. All the signage for most of the day has been directing us to Landeck.

From Landeck we rode along the road to Zams – we did not see the bike path. It was only around 3.5 km.

Zams is dominated by huge rocky cliffs to the one side. It also has a church at the centre and a bell tower with bells that regularly ring out. The town is ruined somewhat by the constant traffic passing through.

Our hotel is not what we expected. It has a Austrian name (Hotel Thurner) and looks like a typical Austrian country hotel – however it is run by Chinese, who struggle to speak German with us (English is an even worse prospect). There are also a lot of people smoking in the downstairs restaurant which put us off. However our room is large and clean and doesn’t smell of smoke and the staff are friendly so it meets our needs well (also not expensive). We avoided the smoky restaurant and bought some things from the supermarket to eat in the room.

We heard it raining in the night, and must has also snowed, as when we awoke the snow on the hill outside our balcony was really low. The cloud cover was also pretty low, and it was cold (around 1 degree).

Today’s ride, from Zams to Innsbruck was entirely alongside the Inn Bike Path, which follows the Inn river. It was a relatively easy ride, dropping around 200 m over 80 km. There are just enough little up hill stretches to keep you warm while riding, which was just as well as it remained quite cold the whole day.

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The cloud was low most of the day, which was a pity as it obscured the tops of the mountains. However it did begin to clear up a bit towards afternoon and we could get some glimpses of the higher peaks.

At one point, near where this photo was taken, we rode past a herd of cows in a field. They were all grazing at once and the sound of their cow bells was like a loud discordant glockenspiel.

The last 30 km of the ride, after Telfs, was quite flat. Telfs was the largest town along the route, but we didn’t turn off. We were keen to stop for a rest and a coffee, but thought we would find something along the route.

There were still some interesting sights along this flat part of the route, such as this church built right at the top of a hill – I wonder how the people get to it?

We were speculating about what this contraption, up on the hill above the town of Stams was. Kris asked a local passerby and was told that it is to train for ski jumping. Evidently they can jump off these without snow. The little one is for beginners. I would love to see someone jump off these.

We were impressed by these sheer cliffs a little further on. It looks as though there is a bridge built along one side, but it looks as though it may not be in use any longer.

We stopped for a coffee and cake to warm up about 15 km out of Innsbruck, in a nice warm cafe attached to a supermarket.

We had done around 80 km when we got to Innsbruck at around 3 pm. However, we circled the town a bit looking for our accommodation in the Youth Hostel. One odd thing I noticed about Innsbruck was that the pedestrians all seem to walk around looking at their mobile phones. I noticed this around 4 or 5 times just on our short ride through the city – quite alarming if you feel they are about to walk in front of your bike.

By the time we got to the hostel, we had done 91 km. We still felt quite energised after we checked in and dropped our stuff off. We got back on the bikes and did another 14 km exploring. We had two draft beers in a cafe in the old town and bought a few things to eat.

Today was a rest day in Innsbruck – we were booked into the youth hostel for two nights. When we woke up it was totally overcast and we couldn’t even see the mountain view that I knew was outside the window from the previous evening.

We spent the morning using the hostel washing machine and sitting in the hostel lounge working on our computers. It was nice and quite and comfortable, the internet connection was good and we had the place to ourselves.

As we sat there, the weather slowly cleared. By the time we went out at around midday the sun was out and it was getting quite hot. Lots of people were out and about, children playing in parks and eating ice creams. We had an unfortunate incident with the camera while taking a photo alongside the river – it fell. It was already a bit wonky, but now the lens didn’t open at all. We headed back to the centre and bought a new camera in a big department store. It is better than the last one! Hopefully you will see an improvement in the blog photos from now on.

After meandering around a bit, we found a local cafe and had a big lunch. We didn’t realise it would be so much food until it came – we didn’t have to eat again for the rest of the day. The local cuisine is very hearty – I had the Tyrolean dumplings and Kris had the schnitzel with potato salad. The proprietor has run the cafe for 31 years.

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In all, we did just 18 km around Innsbruck.

Today we rode for 59 km, the first 40 km of which were along the Inn Cycle way again. This part was relatively easy and very beautiful. The weather had cleared up, and we had great mountain views.

The difficult part of our journey was a huge climb starting at the town of Jenbach. This is where we left the Inn Cycle way to make our way up to the Achensee, an alpine lake. The climb was so steep that we pushed our bikes up most of the way (it was steeper than Horokiwi road). It took us more than an hour. The climb started in the busy town, and the road grew smaller and smaller, until we came to an intersection at a busy motorway. It was not at all clear if the bike path continued on the small track behind us or if we would have to ride on the highway. We stood there for quite a while speculating, and stopped a few turning cars to ask if they knew whether you could get through on the track behind us. The third driver we asked could confirm that it was a bicycle trail. This trail switched back through mainly wooded areas. Most of the while we were pushing our bikes as it was still steep. At one point we stopped and had a chat with a friendly tramper. Two girls also sailed past us looking relaxed on their electrical bikes.

When we got to the top of the climb, we were lucky to see the Achensee narrow gauge steam cog railway. It was just connecting to the cogs to make its way down (a clue to how steep the hill is). There was a hotel/cafe right there at the top and we stopped for some coffee and cake on the terrace – feeling we deserved it.

The path to the lake was easy from here onward – downhill. And stunningly beautiful. The lake is a deep blue/green colour and is surrounded by mountains.

We had to ride around the lake to get to our Gasthaus in Achenkirch am Achensee, at the north end. Some of the mountains sit directly on the lake and the snow seems to cling to the mountain almost on the lakes edge.

There were many other cyclists and walkers enjoying the path along the lakeside. Some other touring cyclists stopped for a chat.

Our accommodation was a very traditional guest house, efficiently run by an elderly lady. It was really quiet – I think we were one of only two lots of guests that night.

For supper, we first finished the cheese and crisp breads we had been carrying at a lakeside picnic spot. We then had some Hefeweizen beer and Tyrolean soup (with noodles, meat and veg) at the nearby cafe/ restaurant.

Today we had another beautiful ride – 59 km from Achenkirch in Austria to Bad Tolz in Germany.

We first rode through Achenkirch township which extends for a while along the river at the top of the lake.
Then the cycle path took us off road, on a compressed gravel road in the mountains. The road contoured up and down through the Achenwald forest towards the Sylvensteinsee, another alpine lake.

The German border was around 13 km into our ride. Once again, the only sign that we had crossed was the old abandoned border post building. The picture is too boring to even put in this blog.

We first caught glimpses of the beginning of the lake between the trees. The path then veered away again into the forest and we did a bit of a climb over a neck before reaching the lake again – we crossed at a high bridge with a magnificent view – including someone catching fish from a boat below.

Then we were back onto more gravel road into forest to the small outpost of “Falls”, where we really started encountering a lot of Saturday day trippers, many on bicycles.
There is a large bridge crossing the narrowest part of the lake at Falls. An advantage of being on a bicycle is that you can easily stop on a bridge to admire the view.

A little further on was a dam wall, with many motorists, cyclist and motorcyclists (smokers) stopped and admiring the view. (tip – right click on any of the photos and chose ‘open in new tab’ for a closer look)

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From here, the cycle path went through a little (lighted) bicycle tunnel. This was where we joined the Isar cycle route. After this, the route was an easy, well surfaced cycle road, mostly downhill into Bad Tolz

We arrived at around 12.30 and had a look around before going to our hotel. The main street in the old town is a pedestrian only, rising up from the river with many painted facades and outdoor restaurants.

One of the great things about cycle touring, is that you never quite know what will happen each day. This was a day that threw up a couple of unforgettable sights. The route was again along the Isar cycle way, following the river from Bad Tolz to Munich. In all we did 80 km – our accommodation is to the north of Munich and we spent a bit of time finding it (first going to the wrong street with similar name – many streets in Germany are called Bahnhof Strasse).

Not all of the route was directly along the river – right at the start of the ride we had a good little climb away from Bad Tolz with lovely rural views. A little further on we had another forest path with very tall trees.

The mishap of the day was that Kris lost his odometer along one of these forest paths. It was somehow knocked off the mounting on the bicycle. We backtracked a couple of hundred meters to see if we could find it but soon decided that that was a fool’s errand.

Eventually we came onto an easy path alongside the river once again. There were a lot of people out and about here, cycling and walking as it was a Sunday.

We noticed some rafts drifting down the river, with groups of people on them obviously having a huge party. They even had live music and amplifiers on these rafts. The rafts were just made of huge logs lashed together with a platform on top, so I was amazed that they took their musical instruments onto them.

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Then we got to a weir, with a bridge and beer garden part way down. I didn’t believe it when Kris said one of the rafts had gone over the weir, until I saw it myself. Another one came down and I managed to capture some pictures from the bridge – they all cheer loudly as they come down the weir – just like on a roller coaster. It was one of the craziest things I have seen. The scene was made even more surreal by a Bavarian band sitting in the beer garden nearby playing folk music at their table. It was not clear whether they had just come off one of the rafts or if they were part of the beer garden entertainment.

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When we got to Munich we decided to first head into the central city to see if we could find the Decathlon to buy another odometer. We first noticed that there were a lot of Police around, then we noticed that some of the streets we were coming down were closed to traffic. We found ourselves right at the starting point of a huge protest. It was a pro-EU, anti nationalism protest in anticipation of the upcoming EU elections. It was very peaceful and people of all ages were taking part. Later I read that they estimated that 10 thousand people took part. It took a while for them all to stream by. We couldn’t find the Decathlon so headed on to our hotel.

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After checking in and washing up at the hotel, we headed back into the nearby Englischer Garten, the huge park in the centre of Munich. The gardens have many beer gardens in them and it was a hot Sunday afternoon, so there were lots of people around. Many were just sitting picnicking in small groups in remote parts of the gardens.

The first beer garden we found was ironically the one we went to in 2012 on our first trip – with all the dog walkers. We decided to try some different places this time. Below are some pictures of our little beer garden crawl. We had a huge bretzel, some sausage, sauerkraut and potato salad at the first one, which was very traditional. It had an Bavarian folk band but Kris thought it was a bit boring. The second was more laid back, next to a lake – probably the best one. The third was a pretty standard beer garden and the fourth was back at the hotel, on the front terrace. It began to rain heavily soon after we came in from the terrace. Little did we know that it would rain almost continuously for the next two days.

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Today was a rest day in Munich. It rained the whole day – evidently a slow moving storm coming across Europe. We spent the morning at the hotel, researching accommodation for our up coming visit with Elsbeth in Hamburg. We thought it may be easing in the afternoon and ventured into the city – got pretty wet. We did find the Decathlon in an underground arcade and bought another odometer. Had some coffee and cake before heading back through the now deserted Englischer Garten. Not a good day for sight seeing.

It was forecast to rain the whole day again today and there were heavy rain warnings. We actually enquired whether we could stay another night at the Munich hotel, but it was fully booked. So we decided to do a very short ride – just 33 km to Marzling in the north (near Munich airport).

In the end the ride was not too bad. It was wet, but we rode alongside the river and it was intriguing to see it in flood. There were lots of large branches and logs coming down the river The cycle way was mostly flat and quiet, so we made it in just over a couple of hours.

We were very dirty and full of grit when we arrived early to check in. The hotel were very good, giving us a dry place for the bikes and some water to clean them with. We had to hose down our feet and shoes with the water as well. We rode in our sandals to keep our closed shoes dry for another day.

The room was lovely and large and warm. The hotel was more modern than it looked at first, with entry to the room via a key card. We managed to finalise our booking for our break with Elsbeth in Hamburg.

We walked to the small local shop to buy some more snacks. In the evening we also had some beer, asparagus soup, pork roast and dumplings at the hotel restaurant. Most of the other clientele seemed to be there on business.