Slept in a bit until 8:30, woke in the reasonable hope that the sunny weather at this moment would continue, alas the clouds closed in again, I packed my wet tent and left. A banana on the road for breakfast. Plenty of slugs out today and a few unfortunate ones ended up splattered all over various parts of my bike, which annoyed me a bit.
Today a slightly stiff headwind. Most cyclists around seemed to be going in the other direction, and good for them. Today was my geology day because I saw lots of rocks up close, the cycle way being right between the hills and the water’s edge.
In Ybbs I went shopping at Lidl. Gave a beggar outside the supermarket €1, partly out of sympathy, and partly as protection money for my bike. He also went inside and spent a long time choosing which can of sardines to go with his bread, so I felt a little mean only giving him €1. I realised that there aren’t many beggars in Austria – not sure why this is since the cost of living is so high. There are heaps of bums and beggars in other places. For example in Poland I’m quite stingey I don’t think I gave more than 10zł all up while I was there.
Ate lunch by the river next to a church, then continued, going through plenty of forest. Went past a nice island with fishers then at Grein crossed the river on a radfähre (bike ferry). The captain was nice, spoke some Englisch, and he could drive well.
I had a Slight Misunderstanding with regards to the location of the camp site, so I headed away from the river to the town of Strengberg. Now Austria is a pretty easy place to cycle – if you only cycle along the Donau. So the decent hills here gave me a bit of a surprise. Anyway I got the Strengberg and looked at the big map in town and it said the camping was next to the river. Of course I got myself a bit lost going back to the Danube – my map isn’t very good and the contouring roads don’t really help with navigation.
I got back to the river then had to push the bike through a swampy footpath until I reached a bridle trail. This was actually a pretty cool track for riding horses on. Then the clouds and thunder opened up and it started pissing rain.
Dashed the last 500m out to the road, regardless of weather the man from snowy river might be coming in the other direction, and found an open garage to shelter under. A woman poked her head out and I asked “Woher ist das campingplatz?” and she said it was here; she was actually the manager. She gave me a coffee and towels and we had a chat because she spoke English. It cleared up and there was a rainbow so then we went to the camping field, with cows in the next paddock.
Dep 9:45, arr 6:15, dst 91km.
<li><a href="http://rodney.id.au/v/tour2008/07/08/">View all photos for today</a></li>
<li><a href="https://lorrimar.id.au/tour/tour2008/2008-07-08">View on map</a></li>