13th May (raining and cold) 90km

How much water is too much?

Certainly not in Africa, where there are regions, which don’t see water from one year to the next.  Then we have the round the world sailors, venturing across vast amounts of the stuff, but without a desalinator, it’s no good to anyone.  I happen to know how much is too much water!  Imagine, getting up at 6am with a hard day of cycling ahead. You have to dress for the occasion, which means, as the temperature is around 10 degrees, cycling shorts, longs over the top and on top of that, waterproof pants.  On the top half we have cycling top, polar fleece, (to repel the water) and waterproof jacket.

Now the term waterproof is a tricky one.  Water resistant will merely keep the odd drips at bay. Waterproof implies there is some proof that water will not get in.  I have a problem with that!  After cycling for two straight days in the pouring rain from early morning to late at night, I can safely argue the term waterproof and I also know, how much water is too much! 

Anyway….our cheap little tent passed it’s first test last night but to be honest, it was just steady drizzle, not torrential downpour so we’ll have to reserve judgement.  Hopefully it won’t get a bigger test than last night but that’s probably not likely.

When we woke at 6.15am the rain was still pattering down on the tent so we were in no hurry to get up and get moving.  Our morning consisted of checking our pannier bags and jackets in the laundry which had all dried out overnight and giving our clothes an extra whirl in the dryer after we had washed them and given them two whirls in the dryer last night. 

All set for a cold and rainy day of cycling

Finally everything was dry and packed away and we left the camp at 11.30am with the delightful surprise that it had only cost $20 for the night with no extra money for showers – although we spent plenty on washing and drying!  It was so worth it though to be warm and dry again.

We had a bit of trouble getting out of Murnau a Stallansee in the direction we wanted but eventually got there after first visiting a supermarket and picking up the day’s supplies.  

A bit of a noisy stop but at least it was dry!

Had lunch in a bus stop at the side of a very busy road but at least we were dry and could take our sodden jackets off for awhile.  Got to say the plastic bags over our feet worked a treat and consequently we were a lot drier and warmer than yesterday.  Yes, some may call us cheapskates…..we call it Kiwi ingenuity!  Cheap, effective…..and disposable when they become too torn and dirty.

Pleasant cycling, despite the weather!

There was a huge difference in river water levels between yesterday and today.  Yesterday most of the river beds seemed nearly dry whereas today the rivers were nearly overflowing their banks!  We crossed the Loisach river four times today and it was quite a sight.

At one stage we were cycling alongside it on a very pleasant gravel path, listening to all the birds and wondering about the wildlife in the region.  I said to Pete if we were quiet we might see more wildlife but once we ceased talking, we realised what a noise our tyres made crunching along over the gravel and burst out laughing.  That outburst startled a deer who leapt across the path about five metres in front of us.  Unfortunately there was no chance of me unzipping my rainjacket, then unzipping my polarfleece pocket, undoing the ziplock bag and retrieving the camera, turning it on and snapping a photo.

Did manage to photograph this little fellow - obviously one of the farmers round here is a bit of a frustrated artist.

Shortly after that we came into the village of Benedicktbeuren which had a huge church and cloister attached.  There is a LOT of religion in these parts where even out in the middle of nowhere you find ornate shrines, always with a little seat at the side.

Benediktbeuren church which had a huge cloister as well.

The day had been going reasonably well direction-wise until now when we were trying to find our way to the largest town in these parts called Bad Tolz.  But somehow we managed to skirt round it to the west and North – it was uncanny how we just could not seem to get there and it always seemed to be about 13km away.

We did manage to find some lovely cycle paths, usually along rivers, throughout the day and generally the terrain was just undulating but often quite flat.  However, it was still frustrating not to be able to get where we intended going.  Of course part of the problem was our maps were loaded on the computer and because of the rain, we didn’t want to get it out, turn it on and check too often if our directions were right.  We could have had a real disaster if we had just headed east as we needed to instead of actually checking the computer because when I convinced Pete we needed a ten minute break anyway and we should check to see if we could get through in a direct line, we found we couldn’t as there was a big river in the way and no bridge.   So Pete went down to a nearby garage to fill up with water and get us an ice-cream while I checked the map to see how we could get across this river without backtracking.  Suddenly our luck changed as it stopped raining and Pete met a lovely English speaking girl at the garage who told us of a campground 3kms down the road and gave us excellent directions to get there.  And it was in the direction we wanted, so off we went and found it no problem.

Set the tent up, had showers and then a delicious and HUGE dinner of spaghetti Bolognese at the camp restaurant accompanied by a wine and beer and followed by coffee and cake.  This camp does not really see that many tourists I think as all the people in the restaurant seemed to live there.  And why not – it’s a nice setting and certainly the restaurant is cheap – our entire huge meal including drinks was $38NZ!!  That’s total for both.  

Plus we had a side salad which you can  just see on the left of my hand

I think they are a bit short on entertainment here so we were a huge hit with the fellow campers and any who could speak English came and spoke to us and one came up and offered us a caravan to sleep in for free!

We were a bit dubious because we had already set the tent up in a lovely secluded spot overlooking the small pond, but felt how could we refuse such a kind offer – plus it had started raining again!

We tried in vain to get wifi in the restaurant as we had been looking forward to a relaxed evening making personal contact with people, but that was in vain too as people wanted to talk to us.  In fact they wanted us to get on the piss with them and a number of them were already well on the way.  We tried to beg off saying we couldn’t drink too much as we had to ride the next day as we were expected in Rosenheim – which is true (we have made contact with a cycling duo on a website called Warm Showers), but that wasn’t a good enough excuse and they kept encouraging us to have another one.  So Pete’s story-telling Liverpudlian background came to the rescue and he explained he had a dodgy heart that if he drank too much alcohol made his heart beat too many times!  Their faces immediately changed from eagerly trying to entice fresh blood into their drinking crew, to concern for their new friend’s health problems and they backed off straight away.

So Pete went with Carlos to check out the caravan while I packed up the computer and grabbed our stuff from the tent.  Carlos was very keen to put the heater on but we have very warm sleeping bags so tried telling him “No, no, don’t need it – get too warm” but he was very insistent and quite drunk.  We were a bit worried about what we’d got ourselves into but it was a nice caravan.  After he tried for the third time to put the heater on, Pete brought up the dodgy ticker story again and said if he got too hot his heart went bad and that finally did the trick and Carlos left us in peace.

We ended up having a very comfortable night in the caravan (also glad there was a bolt on the door!) although we did wake a lot and it was raining all night.  We have all our valuables with us but we’re still a bit worried about all the gear in the tent and hope it isn’t getting soaked.