26 May 2016 (misty, fine, sunny, windy, rain, thunderstorm, fine again) 60 km

Writing this I am overlooking the Danube river. We are at a campsite on it’s banks using unlimited wifi….and let me tell you…that is like hen’s teeth. On the opposite side of the river is the village of Durnstein, just beautiful, basked in early evening sunshine.

Mmmm.......mmmm

The day began at 7am and after clearing our sleeping bags away, we tucked into cereal bananas and raspberries. Great way to fuel up for the day. Our German neighbours, Lars and Jonas…tell me about it, right….Scandanavian names, got up shortly after and began preparing for their departure, in the opposite direction. Nice young guys and we wish them safe travels.  

All packed, goodbyes undertaken and we cycled off in the direction of Melk, one of the places Julia wanted us to see. 

The day upon waking was misty, but now the weather had fined up, the sun was out and we enjoyed a lovely ride alongside the Donau, watching the rivercraft motor by.  A lot more cruisers on the water today and Julia gave me some statistics on the amount of boats operating these cruises….amazing numbers….I’ll bet that is a closed shop, no one would get a look in.

Melk Abbey

At Emmersdorf, we crossed the bridge to Melk and it’s fantastic Abbey.  Arrived and immediately went to tourist info only to find out that it was Corpus Christi and a holiday. Now being the strong church goers that we are, we had no idea what that signifies, but it did piss us off, as all the supermarkets were closed. You would think that if they were going to hold a religious holiday whilst we are cycling our way around the country, they would at least have the decency to give us notice to stock up on provisions…..I mean …has someone died or something…?

Took a stroll through the town, passed the religious service that was going on in the town square, up to the Abbey, apparently one of the finest examples of Baroque church architecture you will see. We concur…it was beautiful so we enjoyed a nice wander around and inside the buildings and gardens.  We then found an ice-cream shop that was open, so knowing that this could indeed be our last supper as it were, until the supermarkets opened again tomorrow, we simply had to buy one each and sought out some shade to eat them.

On the way out of Melk, we spied a Service Station that was open so fearing this could be the last sign of life for awhile, we ventured in and cleaned out their fresh food cabinet like a swarm of locusts.  Now we felt ready to continue with our nice flat cruise down the super-highway of cyclists by the Danube.  Funny, when we were in the hilly regions of Germany, Czechia and Austria, we didn’t see any other bikepackers, but now we’re on the flat, you get sick of saying hello to them all so just stop bothering.

Next we came across the Schonbuhel Castle which is very impressive, seemingly growing out of the rocky cliff face that rises straight out of the Danube.  We have had a very cruisy day, acting like real tourists and so it continued with castle ruins appearing on a regular basis.

However, just after we stopped for our second lunch, using up yesterday’s camembert with two buns scored from the garage, we noticed some storm clouds lurking over the Wachau Valley where we were headed.  

Schonbuhel Castle

Sure enough, we’d no sooner packed up and hit the road than the first big fat raindrops started to fall in an ever-increasing tempo, so we made a dash back 100 metres to a café and sheltered under their garage for about fifteen minutes.

Then we felt it was safe to venture out again and got harrassed by raindrops for the rest of the afternoon.  They never really came to much but made us dash along as fast as we could to try and protect our dry footwear.  It was still warm and we just couldn’t be bothered trying to get all our wet weather gear out and getting all sweaty inside of it.

Durnstein

Before we knew it, we were opposite Durnstein in this lovely campground with a lovely quiet little patch all to ourselves.  As always it was straight to the showers before having a relatively relaxed pre-dinner beer and checking messages and Facebook.  Then it was time for our two tins of herrings we bought from the garage with another two buns.  Luckily the campground had some sweet pastries so we bought two of those to go with our after dinner coffee while we wrote the blog.  The rain has buggered off completely and it’s a beautiful evening.

Just a note on birdlife – I can hear a pigeon cooing as I write this but they are nowhere near as dominant as on our last bike trip.  Crows abound but weirdly enough, we didn’t see any in Czechia – it was like they couldn’t get over that mountain range.  Or maybe the Czech men outdid them with the whole brooding, hooded stare thing and the crows just felt completely intimidated.  We have heard plenty of Cuckoo birds too.

We have just watched the sun go down on the beautiful village of Durnstein across the Danube from our campsite.  As the sun went down, the lights came up and what a spectacular sight!

Thank goodness for digital cameras - the whole scene just kept looking better and better!