20th May (cloudy, cool morning, fine and mild in afternoon) 80km

It rained steadily all night but our little Chinese tent was up to the task and we were nice and dry.  Slept well, not waking ‘til 8am…….but that’s probably because we realised that there was not much to wake up for!  The skies were leaden and we considered staying put for the day.  This camp was extremely cheap at 10 Euros per night and because we had the bathrooms all to ourselves, we were able to charge the computer, camera and both solar chargers.  Of course the main flaw with solar chargers is that you need sunshine for them to work!  So luckily they can be charged by power plug too.

Began the day with the obligatory cup of tea…eeeeeh…thou can’t beat a good cup a cha…! Then, it was the almost compulsory muesli, usually with banana, although not today.  Capped off with cheese on bread from yesterday, still tasty and breakfast was done. We were moving between the toilets, charging everything and letting the tent dry. The day wasn’t improving, but getting no worse either. We rode away from our camp at 11.30am, with a fairly dry shelter considering the night’s rain and after a super quick peruse of Ranshofen and a stop for supplies at a supermarket, we left Braunau at midday.  Decided to take a minor road rather than the river path and this set us up for some of the best riding we’ve had so far – beautiful, fast surface, mainly flat on quiet roads through picturesque villages.

Some of the town names crack us up
- it doesn't take much!

The weather, although still overcast, was looking like it may improve and we were keeping an eye on the following clouds.

Through villages like Mining  and into Kirchdorf, where we stopped for lunch in the middle of the village at an info board, which was undercover and had two bench seats either side of a table.  There we met a nice lady who was supposed to be meeting a group of people to take them bird watching and identifying plant life. However, after fifteen minutes nobody had turned up, so she must be crap at both.  

Lunch spot at Kirchdorf

Cool little cottage we passed today

On through Obernberg and Reichersberg on our way to Scharding.  The day was now sunny and fine and all was good with the world.  This was a beautiful town and one deserving of a host of photographs. Found a great tourist info, with a wifi hotspot right outside, with a bench seat and table, overlooking the river Inn.  As far as offices go, it doesn’t get much better!

Obernberg - above and below

Part of the riverside track today

We took the opportunity to upload two days’ worth of blogs with lots of photos as each photo was loading in only a few seconds, whereas the wifi we had last night at the Gasthof only managed to load two photos and each took about two minutes!  Then the wifi cut out completely! 

We each had a turn with the computer while the other took the camera and snapped some photos of this extremely picturesque town.  

The gate into Scharding

Pete on the streets of Scharding

Scharding looking like a very colourful Amsterdam

Then it was a quick trip to the impeccably clean WC (which has been a feature of today – WC’s everywhere, all clean with paper, soap and handtowels!) before heading over the bridge back into Germany.  

Looking back at Scharding, Austria from Neuhaus, Germany

Here we had a lovely riverside track winding through forest although because of this, it was quite dark.  Emerged from the darkness at Neuberg and I suggested we go up to see the castle.  Pete was not keen and neither was I, once we were halfway up the hill.  We had to push our bikes and the sweat was flowing.  It seemed like a km of winding, steep road before we arrived at the castle but half of it had scaffolding over it.  Plus we were too close so couldn’t get a good photo of it, so we may has well have stayed on the nice flat river track! 

Anyway, decided to stay on the top road in the dying sun and plod on looking for a freecamp.  At Scharding we had discovered there was no camping to be had between there and Passau – a distance of about 20km.  Quite unbelievable when both are tourist towns.  We didn’t want to go beyond Passau and then have to backtrack to see it in the morning, so kept checking out patches of forest, but none were suitable.  Most were too wet and/or close to the road.  So we’d decided to head for a campground about 10km west of Passau when we came across a grassy area between a walkway and a road in Passau itself.  In this large area of disused land, we found an unobtrusive space at the back of this meadow and pitched the tent as it was now 8.45pm.  Tent up and made our dinner of pasta and herrings in paprika sauce, followed by bread and cheese plus the biggest fattest raspberries and blackberries we’ve ever had, with yoghurt – man they were tasty!!  Then followed a coffee and biscuit as we typed up the day’s blog.