Black Sea or Bust - Day 10 - Linz to Persenbeug (81 km)

Bitterly cold and wet. The breakfast in the hotel is 15 euros so Doris and I take ourselves off to a bakery/cafe in the town and have excellent fresh rolls etc. The scenery today is as dull as the weather and the only place of note that we pass through is Mauthausen, the site of one of the Nazis toughest camps, reserved from the outset for "incorrigible enemies of the Reich". There are remains of the camp and memorials but in the driving rain I don't stop.

The rain does stop as I get to Grein at lunchtime and of all the Danube towns so far it is my favourite. Perhaps for technical and flood necessity reasons most of them ignore the river and are set back a little. Grein elegantly faces out towards the south bank and could almost be said to have a promenade. I have to cross by ferry here but no negotiation required, a cheerful young pilot who tells me that he was brought up in Grein and that he loves it here. I didn't ask "what do you do in the winter?" But what do they do in the winter? No skiing nearby, no cyclists in May let alone February. God knows. One thing I do notice that you almost never see anyone with a mobile phone in their hand, that hasn't arrived yet, but that might just be that reception in some of these valleys is so bad that there is no point.

So on a dull day with not much to relate here is a typical cyclist's day on the Danube:

05.00 Wake, wonder where wife is, realise bed too narrow/short/hard/soft. Realise that I am in crap hotel. Go back to sleep.
06.00 Wake, wonder where wife is, realise bed too narrow/short/hard/soft. Realise that I am in crap hotel.Go back to sleep.
06.30 Get up. Try and find something that doesn't smell like a camel's backside to wear.
07.00 Breakfast. Eat an identical breakfast to the last 10 days. There really is no difference wherever you stay.
07.30 Repack pannier bags. After ten days I am no closer to establishing a system by which one contains clean and the other dirty. This process is the most irritating part of the day
08.00 Pay the bill, reassure proprietor that theirs is the finest hotel on the river and that you will certainly leave glowing feedback on Booknow&despair.com. Set off.
08.10 Panic that I have left phone behind. Stop and search everywhere until I find it in its normal place in my right trouser pocket.
08.20 Panic that I have left the I Pad behind. Stop and search everywhere until I find it in its normal place in the saddle bag.
08.22 Head down and concentrate on cracking out some kilometres.
08.30 Stop to consult map as to where might be a good place to stop for coffee.
09.30 Arrive at possible coffee stop but decide to press on.
09.45 Arrive at another possible coffee stop but decide to press on
10.15 Desperate for coffee but consultation with map tells me that there is no significant human settlement for 15 kilometres
11.30 Stop for coffee and croissant
11.45 Start again. This session is normally the most productive of the day. Set the gears to Gas Mark 8 and go like hell.
11.50 Wonder if it's too early for beer
13.00 Knees, arse, wrists and back starting to hurt, but gamely press on.
14.00 More bits starting to hurt. Start looking for somewhere to stop for lunch. Beer fantasies rampant.
14.30 Lunch and beer
15.30 Set off again
16.00 Starts to rain. Stop to put on waterproofs. Can't find waterproof trousers. End up unpacking both panniers in bus shelter watched by two disapproving old ladies.
16.30 Realise that I am within 10 km of the hotel for the night in Kleine Schmetterling im Wald and that there will be absolutely nothing to do there and that I may as well stop for more beer.
17.30 Arrive at hotel in rain. Exchange pleasantries with proprietor before lugging bags up to room. Unpack. Flick through 156 TV channels all of which are German speaking and most involve young women who want me to phone them. Watch 'Big Bang Theory' in German. Works for me.
19.30 Walk 50m to local bar for supper. Try and write something witty for blog while eating something that I thought was chicken but turns out to be meat that bears some relation to ham, gherkins and some white vegetable.
20.30 Return to hotel room. Stare at wall.
21.30 Fall asleep with I Pad playing French cop show Spiral  (excellent) resting on my nose.

Black Sea or Bust - Day 9 - Obermuhl to Linz (48km)

The hotel at Obermuhl is one of the best. It's light, bright and the lady owner is cheerful despite the fact that business is abysmal. In fact I have been the sole guest in the last three hotels at which I have stayed. The location is superb, my head on the pillow is no more than thirty feet from the Danube and if I am at my window and lean forward a little I can see a couple of miles downstream.

It's raining again as I set off, I only have to go a few kilometres before the path vanishes and I have to do some more negotiation to do with a ferryman. The ferry is on the far side but there is a telephone link.
"Can you pick me up please?"
"How many of you are there?"
"One."
"No. You will have to wait until someone else comes."
I look back up the path as far as the drizzle permits. Not a sign of life and I barely saw a living soul yesterday. Will I have to stay here, get a job, contract a bigamous marriage and have children before I can cross? After ten minutes I try again.
"It's still just me."
"If you pay 4 euros I'll come."
I look at the fares listed on the notice board. The normal fare is 3 euros. Oh for God's sake!
"Yes I'll pay 4 euros. Please come now".
So I progress through a wet morning. Every twenty kilometres or so on the Danube there is a massive hydro-electric dam with accompanying locks for shipping access. Each one looks entirely appropriate for a setting for Wagner's Ring Cycle though, now I think about it, that's been done before.

The landscape opens up once more as we near Linz and it's not far to go as I have allowed myself a half day off and I am at my hotel at lunchtime. I have treated myself in this respect also having booked into the modern, glassy Steigenberger Hotel, where the staff are pleasingly obsequious when I arrive despite the fact that both Doris and I are distinctly mud spattered.
In the afternoon the sun comes out, I 'do' the Lentos art gallery and have a stroll round the town. I have very good salad for dinner and a all in all a good end to the day.

Black Sea or Bust - Day 8 - Vilshofen to Obermuhl (70.7 Km)

On the principle that what goes up must go down, there was a high speed, poultry scattering, free-wheel down the hill back to the Danube straight after breakfast. Then an attractive run along the right bank to Passau the last city before Austria. I am there by 12.00 so have time to dump the bags at the station and have a stroll. Passau sits on a narrow spit of land between the rivers Danube and Inn and it's an attractive town, not as cute as most that I've been through. It looks as if real people might live there. No it's better than that, it's a proper German town where, if you were an escaping WW2 British POW, you might change trains on your way to the Swiss Border. There are decent antique shops, I buy a few postcards just to keep my hand in and then take in Museum of Modern Art housed in a superb 18th century building. Some of the content is OK but not worthy of the gallery itself.

The hills close in on the Danube after Passau, the scenery improves and the river moves faster. Ten kilometres downstream we pass into Austria, the border is virtually unmarked apart from a rusty sign nailed to an oak tree. This is the new Europe, I have only shown my passport once on this trip and that was at St Pancras. A big bonus however becomes immediately apparent. The Danube Path signage is now in the hands of the Austrians, probably the Upper Austrians, but their signs, while not much bigger than the hated Bavarian variety, are a model of bold and functional design. Do I detect a Secessionist influence or perhaps a touch of Bauhaus. No, I'm talking bollocks, they're just signs for God's sake but at least you can read these. The scenery gets better and better while the weather gets worse.

A bit further on we get to one of those points where there is no more path, the side of the valley becomes cliff and you have to cross the river. There are no bridges here in the middle of nowhere but there are lots of tiny ferries which can carry a maximum of twelve passengers with bikes. I have consulted my map and know that the ferry at which I have arrived goes either straight across depositing me on the opposite side to my hotel or a couple of kilometres further downstream on the same side as my hotel. There are two men aboard, the driver and a younger man, a trainee perhaps. Knowing that these ferries hate going virtually empty I enter negotiations.
"Can you take me down the river please?"
"Is it just you?" they ask. Perhaps they think that I am an outrider, a trail blazer,
 for the Buenos Aires Ladies Cycling Club. They hope that at any moment fifty or sixty stout Argentinian matrons will come strenuously pedalling round the corner.
"Yes it's just me"
"Oh" they say "perhaps someone else will come".
"No I don't think so" I haven't seen a single other cyclist on the Path since I left Passau. "I am alone on the road".
They sigh. "We can take you across"
"No. I have to go downstream" I point. They look more disappointed.
"Where are you staying?" They ask. I tell them.
"Oh right." After some shrugging I am invited on board.
We chug out into mid stream for what turns out to be a glorious twenty minute trip. Once we are around the first curve all signs of human existence vanish, the forest comes right down to the water and for a minute or two I am Fitzcarraldo (younger readers should refer to Wikipedia at this point) on his tramp steamer on the Amazon. Birds circle above the trees, did something move in the undergrowth? In the film the tension mounts as the boat rounds curve  after curve without any sign of life until finally Fitzcarraldo and the crew are confronted by a barricade of canoes packed with menacing local Indians. For a moment the image flashes into my head, just around the next corner will be a mass of locals in canoes, wearing lederhosen, Tyrollean hats and little red waistcoats, all will be brandishing asparagus spears.
The younger man speaks goodish English and we chat.
"Two Englishmen passed this way two days ago" he tells me. "They cycled all the way from London and are going to the Black Sea.". I feel inadequate so we go on to the weather and how bad business is. They drop me four kilometres from my Hotel.

Black Sea or Bust - Day 7 - Worth to Vilshofen (98 km)

A sunny start with a bit of shopping in the petrol station next to the hotel, there are almost no local shops in the villages that I pass through. I need water but also I like to have mixed nuts and raisins, trail mix or something. I have had difficulty finding this sort of stuff but now I have discovered that it comes under the heading of 'studenten futterer' which means student feed which is delightful. The first town on my route is Straubing, which has a charming cobbled marketplace, ancient timbered houses, a Rathaus of note and a matchless Baroque church but I couldn't see a Bratwurst stall anywhere so I kept going. Scenically a dull day, even Mother Danube (or should that be Father?) is being a bit of a Plain Jane today.

So, at last, I have time to tell you what I brought along to read on this trip. "No books surely! You have an I Pad don't you?" I hear you cry. Well yes but I have never really enjoyed reading off a screen so I have compromised. On paper Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies has just come out in paperback. Imagine! A Booker winner that is a storming read. I have a charity shop copy of an ancient paperback Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, which sounds like hard work but is quite lively, Across the Plains, by Robert Louis Stevenson, a battered leather-bound collection of travel pieces, the title piece being an account of crossing the USA by train in the early eighteen nineties. Finally I have copy of Twelfth Night a play that I have never seen, read nor worked on. It is an Arden edition with  lots of notes explaining who is who, what it all means and which folio sheet Shakespeare wiped his bum on. On the I Pad I have Claudio Magris Danube and the Lonely Planet Guide to Austria for reference. I also have Patrick Leigh Fermor's Between the Woods and the Water, the second part of his account of a walk across Central Europe in the nineteen thirties, but more pertinently Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men on the Bummel, his sequel to Three Men in a Boat. It is a humorous account of the same three characters from the earlier novel, which is genuinely very funny, whereas  Bummel, which is an account of a German cycling trip, is not, but it is relevant to what I am doing. En route I have bought some German railway magazines so that I have some pictures to look at in bed.

At the end of Day 7 there is a good news/bad news moment. The good news is that the Pension I am booked in is nearly 10 km closer than I thought but the bad news is that it is up in the hills above the river, a murderous climb in the rain at the end of the day. The Pension is deserted apart from me.

Black Sea or Bust - Day 6 - Bad Gogging to Worth (68 km)

I flee Das Bates Motel after a shabby breakfast, the first section is dull and suburban, but then at Weltenburg Abbey the path stops and a ferry takes over for five kilometres through the spectacular Danube Gorge. The cliffs are made up of limestone rocks in fantastic shapes, sculpted over the millennia by the relentless action of Mother Danube.  A number of German artists and men-of-letters have wasted their time and talent inventing legends to go with these formations. Suffice it to say this  is the most impressive scenery so far. On top of the cliffs, just before Kelheim, is the Hall of Liberation, built by Bavarian King Ludwig I to commemorate the War of Liberation against Napoleon in 1813. It is also a monument to German kitsch, a wedding cake on a cliff.

A pleasant ride to Regensburg, the biggest city since Ulm, which possesses the oldest bridge on the Danube. This river, which starts near France and ends in the Black Sea, is unfordable for most of its length and effectively divides northern Europe from the south so bridges play a huge part in its history. There are legends about the building of some of these bridges but I am not sure to which town this particular one relates. In the Middle Ages it seems to have been standard custom and practice for the builder or architect of a major project, when confronted by a lagging schedule and penalty clauses that might mention decapitation, to to do a deal with the Devil. In the case in question the Devil agreed to help complete the job if he were able to claim the souls of the first two to cross the bridge. The cunning builder agreed and on opening day he held everyone back except for a rabbit and a hen who went over first. As they passed the midpoint there was an explosion of Satanic wrath but nothing more, the builder had got away with it. You could argue that the Devil might say that what had been done did not fall in with the spirit of his agreement with the builder and in any case as the Devil, the personification of Evil, he will be more likely to welch on a deal than any other being and fry the builder's arse.  This story raises a more interesting point. Do animals have souls? Google that question and stand well back. Apparently "Many Christians ask 'Will I see my pet in heaven'?" A perfectly logical question from where I am sitting.  For me if humans have souls then so do animals but is there a line to be drawn? Do we stop at mammals? Do sturgeon have souls? Do amoeba have souls? What about those slugs crossing the tarmac in search of love, surely they must have souls. But I don't understand what the word 'soul' really means and again Google will effortlessly deliver an avalanche of opinions so I will leave it to Wilson Pickett who certainly does exemplify what  'soul' means in his recording In the Midnight Hour. Anyway these are the things that one thinks about when cycling in steady drizzle.

An unexciting run on from Regensburg to the night's hotel at Worth am Donau, though I must have been looking knackered when I arrived as a very pretty girl rushed out of reception and seized my bags and insisting on carrying them upstairs to my room. The hotel was also the only restaurant in town and it purported to be Greek and worse I had to break two golden rules of travel, the obvious "don't eat in your hotel" but also Bill Bryson's rule "never eat in a restaurant that has photographs of its dishes outside". The restaurant was plastered with yellowing snaps of moussaka and souvlaki. Dinner was disgusting.

Black Sea or Bust Day 5 - Marxheim to Bad Gogging (81 km)

A glorious morning, a Sunday, and as I freewheel down towards the river church bells are ringing in all the nearby villages, I pass formally dressed families on their way to church. You never hear a peal of bells as you do in England, here the bells just toll. There is nothing to match the sound of the bells of St Martins in the Fields as you come out of Charing Cross tube for a 9.00am Sunday work call at the Coliseum.

Most of the day's ride is along the banks of the Danube and mostly through woodland. There are two towns of note, Neuburg and Ingoldstadt. The former is full of architectural gems that I didn't stop to look at. Ingoldstadt is famous for it's beer which I did stop to try. Reputedly this is the best beer in Germany and while my opinion of German beer is that it's alright in its way but it all tastes the same, I will admit that what I sampled in Ingoldstadt  was very good indeed. The original Frankenstein novel is set here.

In the afternoon the rains came, the path turned to mud and at some point I missed a sign which resulting a two kilometre excursion down a spit of land that ran parallel to the bank, a dead end. There was nothing for it but ride bank and the rain bucketed down. At this point I thought "Why the fuck am I doing this?"

The afternoon became pure drudgery alternately on a muddy path or on busy roads. I was happy to get to Bad Goggingen, my destination for the night, but the Pension that I was booked into was unimpressive. The place was deserted but the front door was open. There was note on the bannister telling me that I was in Room 18 and that breakfast was at 7.30. There was a smell about the place and as I prepared to lug my bags upstairs I noticed movement behind the frosted glass of the kitchen door. I tapped on the glass. No reply so I went upstairs feeling that there was just a touch of 'Das Bates Motel' in the air. Nylon sheets! No soap! Overwhelming smell from cowshed next door! When I went downstairs a little old lady came out of the kitchen muttering to herself, she followed me around, still muttering, until I left for supper, another German stage-weight special. If I keep this up I will be the fittest 28 stone man in Europe.

Black Sea or Bust - Day 4 Gunzburg to Marxheim (88 Km)

 Gunzburg is probably the prettiest of the towns that we have passed through but then they are all very pretty and perhaps, like Cotswold villages, once you've seen one you've seen 'em all. But this morning is glorious, cloudless but with a cooling breeze. The very best possible cycling weather. The first part of the day is a long run along the northern bank of the Danube and if I have ever had a fantasy about this trip (and I have) then this is it completely realised. Early morning sunshine, birdsong all around, both banks heavily wooded and the Danube looking .... well blue. Absolutely blue.

There is a flat agricultural section away from the river but soon we are in Dillingen, another fairy-tale (spare no cliches) cobbled street town with steeply roofed timbered houses, an onion domed church and a Rathaus (town hall) with a stork's nest on its chimney. But let's just pause for a moment and discuss cobbles. What bastard invented these? They are probably one of the "things that the Romans did for us". If you are a cyclist they are torture, particularly if your bottom is showing signs of wear a mere four days into this trip. However   I must tell you something that reflects the very masochistic essence of being a cyclist. Just before I set out on this trip I was browsing (I didn't buy) the cycling magazines in W H Smith's at Waterloo. In one of those magazines was an announcement of a forthcoming event in Belgium from Antwerp to Hoogveligning or somewhere and the whole route and indeed the whole point of the event was that it took place entirely on cobbles. You may think that I am daft cycling 50 miles a day for three weeks but that surely takes the biscuit.

The main interest for me today is at Hochstadt and in particular the Second Battle of Hochstadt. What a coincidence that they had two battles here, for all I know there were more. Perhaps it had a good reputation as a battle field and warring powers would book a fixture there. It is as flat as a pancake so neither side could complain of not getting a level playing field. However it comes nowhere near matching the River Isonzo in north eastern Italy. During World War One there were no less than twelve battles of the Isonzo, most of which involved the unfortunate Italian troops assaulting carefully prepared Austro-Hungarian positions along the Alpine watershed. The odds were so unequal that in the early days of the war merciful Austrian officers would order their troops to cease fire and shout down to the Italians below "For Gods sake stop! If you keep coming we will shoot you all". At which point the Italians would retreat back to their trenches. Such gallantry didn't last long. This front yielded the highest percentage of casualties per capita of troops involved of any front anywhere in WWI. Back to the Second Battle of Hochstadt which we British know as Blenheim which is an Anglicisation of 'Blindheim' a tiny village just to the east of Hochstadt. Here the Duke of Marlborough and his Austrian ally Prince Eugene of Savoy defeated a French and Bavarian army in 1704 changing the course of history. From this tiny village of Blindheim which consists of just a few houses and a church (which has a commemorative plaque) we have Blenheim Palace, umpteen Blenheim Roads, Terraces, Streets, I had a flat in Blenheim Gardens half way up Brixton Hill once. We have towns called Blenheim in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Canada. There are window cleaners, ranges of stationery and power boats, wineries, laundromats, aircraft, ships etc etc all named from this cluster of houses. While we are at it we might briefly discuss what this battle, part of the War of the Spanish Succession was about. The British with their European Allies (the Grand Alliance) were trying to prevent the French king Louis XIV from imposing his nomination on the vacant Spanish crown. How absurd! What on earth were all those British troops, most of whom had walked to Blindheim from Flanders, doing fighting this battle so far from home. Oh hang on a moment, don't we have British troops in Afghanistan fighting to prop up a distant foreign regime. It just shows that not much has changed in 300 years.

Onward from Blindheim to Donauworth where I stopped for coffee and ice cream served by a Brazilian waiter who, when he discovered that I was English, asked me if I knew the Charing Cross Road. He reminisced happily about his time working in a Brazilian cafe about 100 yards down from the Phoenix Theatre and almost next to Blackwells.

The sun was still shining and Doris was humming contentedly between my thighs (not a sentence that I will write very often I think) and bed was in another tiny village called Marxheim.  Nothing to do with Karl as far as I know. A good supper in a pretty hotel/restaurant. Asparagus is in season here and the soup was sensational.