Monday 15 June – an unexpected detour

Monday 15 June – an unexpected detour

We woke up this morning to rain and our hearts sank. We needn’t have worried as it had almost stopped by the time we left. We were also cheered by an exceptional breakfast at Pension Carl Bauer, Kelheim – we loved it that our hostess was wearing a Bavarian dress.

We tried leaving town this morning on the south of the Danube, which appears to be the standard route from the maps. However we were foiled by roadworks and ended up going back over the bridge to the northern bank. We found ourselves in a nature reserve with the Danube on one side and forest on the other. The river looked very misty and moody due to the rain, and the path was muddy. In fact we were riding through puddles that covered the entire path for some of the route, getting the bicycles, breaks and our shoes all dirty. The river is much narrower here and it has cut big vertical drops into some of the rocks along its banks.

reserve1    reserve2

reserve3

This was a wonderful ride for a few kms until we reached a dead end!

reserve4

So we had to back track to a turn-off, to the Kloster Weltenburg, that we had passed. A tourist passenger boat came down the river while we backtracked.

The turnoff took us up a steep gravel road through a forest and we pushed our bikes for part of the way. Every time we stopped, swarms of aggressive blood sucking mozzies alighted on our arms and legs, so we had to keep moving. Eventually we had a nice downhill run and found the Kloster, standing alongside cliffs on the other side of the river. There were a lot of people (presumably tourists) milling around outside.

monestry

We continued around the bend in the river to the little town of Stausacker, where a ferry was waiting. We decided to cross. The ferry did not require power, as it was moved across the river by facing the ferry in the direction using the current to push the boat along. The boat is prevented from going downstream by a pulley on cable running across the river.

ferry2               ferry1

ferry3              ferry4

From here the route took us away from the river a bit and through farmlands and small towns. We saw strawberries and hops growing. We went through Bad Gogging to Neustadt. We met up with another cycling couple who had stayed at the same Pension – they are a German couple and have been to NZ on a 9 week tour. He rides an electric assist bicycle because he is 80 years old. They invited us to stay when we are at the Bodensee.

We bought some pastries and ice cream at the Neustadt supermarket, crossed the Danube and carried on to Ingolstadt.

We cycled into the old town centre of Ingolstadt, which looked very nice, with lots of cafes. However when we got to the tourist information she said that there is no accommodation during the week. What there is, is very expensive at over EUR100. This is because the Audi factory and its workers are taking up accommodation. She advised us to either stay in the camping park or ride onto a smaller town. It was just starting to drizzle again so we decided to carry on. We bought some food at a supermarket on the outskirts and found a pension soon after. The pension is only about 5km from the city, and still not cheap. However neither of us were in a mood to spend more time riding around – our day was a manageable 73km, which seemed about an ideal length to us.

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