Up the Danube without a pedal and other misadventures

We've been without wifi for the last four nights, so I will try to share the highlights and lowlights of the last section of riding, and hope to be able to post this soon.

We had quite a bit of rain on Wed, Thursday and Friday, but since then we’re enjoying pretty hot days, around 30C. Because of the rain and also not so many campgrounds, we have used hotels a few times, and thoroughly enjoyed them – well, once we got to them. More about that later.

A particularly nice hotel in a tiny village called Kirch. Not very expensive either

Packing up our gear at a hotel takes almost as long as packing the tent as we usually have to remove the panniers and drybags  and cart them in and out of the hotel. We don't  take the panniers off when we're camping

If we were to give marks out of 10 for each day, most would be at least a 7, but Friday earned about a 2! That day things just did not go well. We decided to take an alternate trail that was marked on our map and was said to be much more scenic.  However, we lost the trail first thing in the morning  and ended up climbing a hill in some nice farmland, but completely off the route. We eventually regained the route, only to lose it again some time later. This time it ended up getting us onto a very busy road with no shoulder for about 10km, and that was no fun. We looked for a route to get off it, but ended  up on a dead-end path. The alternate path wasn't particularly interesting  and not really worth the extra 10km.

 Rain started in the afternoon so at a coffee shop with wifi, we managed to book a hotel room about 20km ahead in a village along our route. As usual, we used Booking.com, and I waited to receive  the booking conformation email, and we were all set and on our way, feeling pleased we wouldn't have to set up camp in the rain.

When we got close to the village, we used maps.me navigation which worked great to get us to the LH Hotel. It was strangely located in the middle of a new commercial  building complex on the outskirts of the village. Our smart nav system, being set for bicycles, found an obscure way to access the hotel, via a grassed-over double-track path that used to be or was once intended to be a new road to this hotel area. Now the only way to get to it was to climb down a grassy slope and through a bit of a trench, but hey, we had arrived! Alas our problems weren't  over. We soon discovered that this hotel was not staffed and you needed an access code to unlock your room. We hadn't gotten one in the emails I’d received earlier. Fortunately we discovered we could access the hotel WiFi, so should be able to solve the problem. However, it took quite a while. There was a form to be filled out and sent in online, but it said the website was down. So we then found a number to phone and so we accessed our phone roaming to make the call,  only to find out that noone was available after 6pm. It was now well after 7pm. Meanwhile Frank had noticed a car with a Czech license plate parked outside one room, and he knocked on the hotel door and found a very friendly Czech speaker who was actually German, and who helped us translate stuff and walked us through the online form which finally worked, and eventually we got a text message with our door code. Hooray! (Earlier we had begun to eye up the nice meadow next to the hotel to wild camp!) 

Anyway, turns out the room itself, which was really a studio apartment with full kitchen and ultra modern, was absolutely perfect, in a very quiet location. Oh yah, we had to Google how to turn on the convection cook top as  neither of us could figure it out. Dinner was late that night, but it was good, and that, together with the bottle of wine we had bought earlier really helped console us after a tough day.

Pleasant view from our hard-to-get-into hotel. You can see the incomplete access road that doesn't  actually connect with the main road! Nor does it connect with the hotel car-park

LH Hotel, Leipheim. Cost only 50 euro and was excellent. Just have to make sure you get the door code 🤣

We’ve seen so many attractive, historical towns and villages along the Danube now that they're all a bit of a blur to be honest. But they're all amazingly interesting. We are currently in the area of Bavaria.

Castle courtyard in Neustadt 

Restored medieval city gate, Vohburg

Regensburg. Beautiful city

Straubing. The "stepped"  gables seem to be common in Bavarian buildings

On Sat evening we hit our 2000 km mark!

Yesterday we bumped into Dave again, the Canadian guy from New Brunswick who we had helped with his puncture repair back near Basel. We've seen various other European cycle tourists along the way, with varying degrees of un-friendliness. Of course cycle tourists are a dime a dozen here, so most pay no heed of each other. But quite often the Canadian  flags we have hanging off our bikes do spark some interest and conversation.

So, about the pedal. Well on Friday, my one pedal started making some nasty crunching sounds, And fairly shortly the whole thing seized up and wouldn't even turn. My personal mechanic couldn't  work any magic with it. The bearings had disintegrated and it was done. We were 27km from a bike shop, and luckily we were on flat terrain and I was able to ride with the one pedal and got a new set at a bike shop the next morning.

My broken pedal. It would no longer turn. Managed to ride with just the "spindle" until we got to a bike shop the next day

Getting my new pedals in a bike shop in Donnauworth

 

 

 

We got to take our bikes on a boat for a 7km section of the Danube where it flows through a narrow gorge

 

I've seen several of these horses masquerading as zebra

Today we saw the first barley being harvested 

These are typical cycling route signs. It really helps to have our cycling maps to know what towns to look for, and the little blue 6/Donau  denote EV6 and the Donau Radweg (Danube cycle trail). Signage along the Danube here in Germany has been excellent

He still looks like he's having fun!

Tomorrow we will reach the city of Passau, a major landmark for us. There we will have two days off the bikes. We'll have a rental car and will drive into the Czech Rep to the town of Cesky Krumlov where we will be joined by Frank's brother and sister in law. Looking forward to that. When we resume cycling, we will be Austria-bound.