Good night’s sleep in our freecamp by the lake. Went to sleep last night to the sound of the
kids at the camp next door reciting something, don’t know what, but these young
cult groups are everywhere…! Anyway,
still alive come the morning, so they hadn’t been instructed to whip over and bump
us off. Up early, just after 6.30am to
begin the 4km cycle into Laufen to have a nosey and grab some breakfast. It had rained all night consistently, so we
packed up a soaking wet tent and left. At
some point today, we were going to have to dry it out, and the weather didn’t
look good.
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| Laufen |
Laufen is a quaint town and
we had a look around straight after finding a supermarket and buying breakfast
and lunch. So after taking some shots, we found a great spot overlooking the
river where we could spread out the tent and fly sheet as the weather was
holding. Had a couple of people stop to
try to converse with us about our trip, but really struck it lucky when an
older lady began to speak German but realised we spoke English.
She was so delighted and said “I am English!” and we
spontaneously hugged her! Her name was
Jill and she was from Croydon but she had lived in Laufen for fifty years as
she married a German man who she met in England. Not only was she a darling of a person, but
she bought us two coffees and two chocolate croissants each! We sat talking with her while we had our
breakfast and the tent dried. It was
lovely talking to her but she left after about half an hour to go and see her
husband who would be back from his walk.
As we were folding up the tent, a young pregnant woman came by and we
got chatting to her. Her name was Anna
and she was expecting her first baby next week.
She had come over from Waginger (where we camped two nights ago) to have
a check-up. She was lovely and said it
was a shame we’d already been to Waginger or we could have stayed with her!
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| Crossing the bridge out of Laufen, Germany and into Austria |
Crossed the Salzach River to Austria and began our trek up
the riverbank under ever-darkening skies.
However, the rain held off all morning and even though we had shorts on,
we had our sweatshirts and rainjackets on against the cold. It was a delightful and stress-free ride along
the river but from time to time you would see flood markers of where the river
could rise to – and these were over our heads!
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| Tittmoning |
Reached a bridge at lunchtime which we rode across to the
German town of Tittmoning, which was another delightful and historic town. We
rode around it snapping a few photos and this is where we had our first (and
hopefully only) accident of the trip.
Nothing major, just tried to turn my bike too sharply and it was either
my shoulder going to feel it trying to stop my heavy bike going south, or my
knee when I hit the ground. I opted for
the knee and dug out the first aid kit to keep the blood under control.
After pedalling through town, we found a playground where we
had a thoroughly delightful lunch and even had a handy WC there.
Back on the riverbank, on the Austrian side, it began to
rain and we had to get the full waterproof regalia on. We ploughed on into the rain, hoping it would
abate soon, but no such luck. Instead,
about 5kms down the track, there was a big red and white gate across suggesting
we shouldn’t go any further. We were not
keen to backtrack 5 kms so stayed on course until the bike track started to
deteriorate.
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| Uh-oh......do you think this is a good idea?? |
First it went from hard
packed gravel to a gravel drive with grass down the middle and the odd silty,
sandy patch to navigate. It was obvious
this part of the river had flooded at some stage and they hadn’t got round to
fixing the track up. Then the track went
down to a single track footpath which was not too much of a problem seeing as
we have mountain bikes. Then we had a
tree trunk across the path….and another one…..and another one. Then we had rocks and hills and mud but we
were in that awful position of having gone too far and there was no way we were
turning around. Had a bit of a case of déjà
vu here but thought surely we couldn’t be so unlucky twice? I was getting worried as the rain became more
torrential and the path was right down by the river that we might get caught by
rising floodwaters. Again thoughts of
headlines such as “Stupid NZ bikepackers drown in rising floodwaters” crossed
my mind. We think this must have gone on
for about 5kms before we finally came across a gravel road and found our way
back to the peaceful riverside track…..phew!
The risk-taking gene paid off this time!
Shortly after that we passed a group of young men who had a
fire going on the rocks and music playing and were stood around in a group
singing. They may have been refugees,
but we don’t know. We felt a bit
cautious as you do with any group of men and cycled past with a friendly smile
but weren’t about to stop and chat.
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| Our first view of the castle at Berghausen |
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| And the views kept getting better and better! |
Then we had the delightful surprise of a magnificent
medieval castle in the town of Ach. Actually
the castle itself was in the town of Berghausen, across the river from
Ach. We had heard no mention of it so
were thoroughly amazed by the sheer size
of it – with all the ramparts it would have to have been about a km long!! It was really something special and a treat
to see.
We had a hard climb shortly after Ach but were rewarded with
one last spectacular look at the town and castle at the top.
Then we were on a reasonably quiet road with great surface
and gradient and hummed along about 22kph – fast enough to dry our jackets out
a bit as it had now stopped raining.
After about 10km, we diverted back to the riverside track and this was
fast going as well on hard packed gravel with a tailwind.
We arrived in the town of Braunau about 4pm and it was
another lovely old town. We finally
found Tourist Info and found out where a campground was – naturally it was 3km
back from where we’d just ridden! On the
way, we saw Adolf Hitler’s birthplace which has a big rock outside
commemorating all the lives taken in the Holocaust. He may have been born in Austria but he was
only a short swim across the river from Germany.
Our chosen campground for the night was a private patch of
lawn at the side of a Gasthof
(guesthouse) with brand new bathroom facilities
which we had to ourselves. As the owner
showed them to Pete and me, Pete looked at me and raised his eyebrows, eyes
darting to the left. That could only mean
one thing……it had been two full days since we’d had any…….power! I eyed the socket hungrily and as soon as
mein host was gone I plugged that computer in ready for blogging after we’d set
up the tent!
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| Adolf's old place with big rock on pavement at right. |
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| Branau |
Tent set up, showered and then we decided “bugger the
herrings, we’ll eat at the gasthof” as it had started raining. The gasthof had free wifi (although pretty
slow and inconsistent) and it would have been a cold wet night stuck in the
tent all evening. So it was Brotworst,
sauerkraut and roast potatoes for us, along with beer and wine, followed by
apple strudel – yum!
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