Saturday, June 16, 2012

Monday 28 May - Cycling the Danube: Day 3








Today's journey: Engelhartszell-Aschach
11.11am, In a monastery. This morning we woke up on the river in Engelhartszell. We'd all awoken pretty early, thanks to our early night and sleeping in a tent. It was a bit of a cold one last night but my supersonic mummy sleeping bag kept me warm. I'd forgotten how energising it is waking up in a tent!

We were keen to get on the road and start our first full day of cycling but first wanted to visit a monastery in the hills above the village. We got to a church that we thought was the monastery (but wasn't) just as mass was ending. One amazing thing that happened was, as everyone poured out of the church in to the sunshine, they all gathered in the carpark for a beer. At 11am on a Sunday morning... You don't get that at my church! I don't know if it was because it's a public holiday this weekend in Austria or whether that's a regular post-church activity but it was pretty cool.

We ploughed on looking for the monastery and quickly found it. The church itself was beautiful but one of my favourite things was the fact that, despite observing the usual rituals of a monastery (being silent, eating vegetarian food, waking at 5am), the monks also make and sell their own liquor. We felt obliged to buy some, of course, and so carried on our ride with a bottle of schnapps each, choosing nut, raspberry and apricot between us.

We had to cross over to the north path for the next bit of our ride so we had our first journey on a boat taxi. They are a common occurrence for people that live around here but felt like a pretty fancy way to travel for us. Safely on the other side of the Danube, we began our 35km ride to Aschach. However, not having had breakfast yet, we stopped after only an hour for bratwurst and Radler (beer with lemon juice, similar to shandy). This slow start to our day was to become a theme for our riding, but we were all very happy with it not being a difficult or too-tiring holiday so no one minded the late starts or frequent stops.

A couple more hours of riding and we got to a farmhouse that apparently sold an amazing 'Most' (like local cider). A local woman on our boat taxi had told us about it so we were keen to give it a try. Unfortunately, for the first time on our trip, it started raining a bit so we got our macs out and sheltered under a tree while sipping the famous Most. It was a bit too watery and weak for my liking but did a good job of refreshing us nonetheless.

The rain stopped and, with another 10km to do, we powered on, passing through tiny villages, making up games and generally taking in the beautiful scenery before, suddenly, we had arrived at our destination, Pension Kaiserhof in Aschach. We had got there much quicker than expected and were pretty excited as it was an aamaaaaazing campsite, again right on the river. Considering I had booked all these from England without really knowing how they would turn out, I was happy so far.

I was also getting a LOT of practice at German speaking, which I was really enjoying, and we quickly got our tents up, passed out on the blow-up bed and cracked open the schnapps to try. David and Val went to their lovely room to relax while Andy and Jack went for a nap. It started raining a lot and us girls were in holiday mode so we headed to the restaurant/bar to play cards and try some local wine. A couple of bottles later and it was dinnertime.

Thanks to it still raining, we vetoed the idea of heading in to the centre of Aschach and instead decided to eat at the guesthouse's restaurant. I'm so glad we did... I went for schnitzel, which was absolutely delicious, while the others tried schwein (pork) medallions in a mushroom sauce, or fish. We've been eating so well on this trip!

Hours later and we were still there, all of us totally engrossed in numerous games of cheat (which David quickly learnt and excelled at), ending with dessert and schnapps at about 11pm. Another fabulous day, with a long ride to Linz to look forward to in the morning.

All images © Jack Johns.

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