Hotel details: Revita Hotel Kocher, Stefab-Fadinger Strasse 6, 4084, St Agatha, Ă–sterrerich
Distance cycled: 31 miles
First stop backerei! Bought rye bread for me and salad/cheese roll for Elly.
So pretty. Overtaking lots of tourists!
Stop at kraftwerk (hydro power station) at Jochenstein for cold drinks. Power on to Schlögen loop.
Tiny bike ferry. Lunch on sarny (E) and fresh sliced rye bread (B). Then into cafe for coke (E) and mangosaft (B). Yum. More photos (photos will be posted later when I have wifi!)
Then very hard cycle 8 km uphill to hotel. It's lovely here: they make a big thing of health tourism. There's a pool but I have no trunks and get a hard state when I ask if I can go in wearing clean cycle shorts. Get me a cold coke and Elly an Eiskaffee: she seems to like it
Shower and clean clothes (shorts) then to hotel terrace for more drinks (lager followed by earl grey tea = civilisation!)
Listen to pool and quietness, thinking about tomorrow. BTW, here's what I emailed about my lunch:
Mein Mittagessen: frisch RogganbrotI must be getting middle-aged!
Lovely course texture, reminiscent of tempeh bacon slices
Here's today's cyclemeter map. (JPhone ran out of juice about 6km from hotel.) We didn't need to do this bit: the tour company would normally collect folk from Schlögen but we liked the challenge.
I've called my bike 'Curt' because he's shorter than Lev Davidovitch (and so has a very upright cycling position) and the Germanic for 'short' is 'curtz'. So Elly has called her bike 'Vonny' after Kurt Vonnegut. Breakfast of champions!
So just after posting this, I retreated to our room and an hour of dozing. We went to dinner on the hotel terrace where we'd had drinks. Here's some of my thoughts thereon:
Just had another food-gasm: potato dumplings (half-moon shape) filled with herbs on a vinaigrette of herbs, with lovely salad. Elly had turkey schnitzel with boiled potatoes (I helped her with those) and again salad. My vinaigrette was so good I had to ask for some bread to finish it. The bread that came was that lovely rye bread with carraway seeds. Photo to follow.
As we were starting to eat, the thunder and lightening evolved into a real rainstorm, so we abandoned the terrace for the dining room, juggling plates and causing merriment. Back in the room: the clothes Elly had washed and set to dry on the balcony had become rain-soaked. Mice & men! Despite the rain's temporary cooling effect, it's still somewhat muggy. Oh well: as the evening progresses it will cool.
Other emails:
Hi Bruce, This is where German becomes a pain because of multiple meanings of a word. This one is interesting but only helpful if an inner tube is not repairable with normal kit. der Schhlauch = tube This could be a garden hose or an inner tube or any other sort of flexible tube. But to other more interesting things. How goes it with the bike ride? I hope all is going to plan & is not proving too strenuous for you both. Looking forward to the next progress report. Cheers, Dad
I was just amused by biking being so popular that you could buy inner tubes day and night, and that the box wasn't vandalised. It can't be that the roads are so poor that punctures happen every day: this is in germania!
Hi Bruce, I was amazed to see that such a facility could be provided & maintained. Well done the providers! I've downloaded your latest emails & printed them so that Mum can see what you have sent. I will open your blog & do the same with that each evening. How are the bums & legs coping? Did taking your own saddles cause any concern & has taking them proved to be an aid to your comfort? We're looking forward to your next report. Cheers, Dad
Hi dad. I took my pedals: they have clips, which makes my pedalling easier. I wish I'd brought my own narrow saddle because the wide saddle is lightly interacting with bits of my arse that prefer no interaction. This also impedes my cadences slightly. Elly brought her own saddle but didn't bring the saddle post, because that was what we were told to do. But her saddle didn't fit on her rented bike's saddle post. She's used to a wide saddle so this one isn't so bad: she says it's slightly less comfortable than her own but no real problem. B
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