Today's journey: Grein-Melk
11.11am, Having a wander through the main street of Grein while the others went for a coffee. We'd had such a relaxing night's sleep in our cabins and woke up fully rested and ready for the journey to Melk. Grein was a beautiful little town with a peaceful and ornate church in the centre. I've been going in to lots of churches on this trip; I didn't realise I found them so fascinating but I really do!
When we were all ready, we caught a boat across to the other bank, where we found the route to be very green and lush. We powered on for a good few hours, stopping for a drink in one place that had a trampoline and then carrying on. When we were still about 20km from Melk, where we were camping that night, we decided to stop for 'lunch' (at about 4pm). We had bought stuff for a barbecue the night before and so were amazed to find a perfect spot right next to the river.
The Lawrence family took the reins and got a fire going quickly, and it wasn't long before we were eating like kings! Meat, vegetables, red wine, all alongside the river. We've definitely been living well this trip.
The small town we were in is famous for a monument, Maria Taferl, at the top of the hill. I say 'hill', but it's 4km up, and looks more like a mountain when you're at the bottom! Undeterred, and powered on by all the sausages he'd eaten, Andy decided he was going to cycle up the hill (while David, Val and I caught a taxi up). He was a machine, and got up there the same time we did!! It was amazing!
Once at the top, you could see the view for miles. It was awesome seeing the Danube from such a different perspective and it gave us an idea about how far we'd come (and how far we had left to go, too!).
One of the most fun parts of the trip so far was getting to freewheel the whole way back down to the bottom. It took us approximately four minutes! Once we got back to our barbecue area, we had a surprise waiting for us, as Ruth, Nicky, Jack and Ally had made friends with some local wakeboarders who then offered to take us out on their boat. Of course we accepted and then laughed manically as we sped up and down the river to a hip-hop soundtrack for half an hour. Unfortunately, the guy who was wakeboarding managed to break his cheekbone by kneeing himself in the face during a trick so we headed back to the banks and chatted to them for a while.
David and Val decided to cycle on and find our accommodation and we stayed and had a drink with our new friends. As the light started to fade, though, we though we should carry on, so hopped back on our bikes and found that, with a bit of wine inside us, we were faster than ever! The 20km sped past and 40 minutes later (which was fast, for us), we met David and Val.
Our campsite, we then discovered, was another 10km out of Melk so we learnt our lesson from the night we stayed 'in' Linz and decided to stay where we were. Luckily the only other campsite in the area had space (which may have had something to do with the rainy weather that was forecast?!) so we put our tents up... and heard the distant clap of thunder, followed by some frequent lightning flashes. As we went to bed that night, the storm was above us, which started off being scary but quickly became an absolutely amazing, overwhelmingly loud experience. I've never camped in a storm before but it was brilliant!
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