Day 5: Bad Gögging to Regensburg

A shorter and somewhat less hot day although the eternal truism is that 20km to go feels like 20km to go whether or not you’ve done 40km so far or 80km so far.

The Danube is getting more serious about being a proper river now.

Once again we were up at 6am, powering through the morning news on our phones and down at breakfast at 7am. The absolutely gigantic dining room was already stuffed with older guests getting the highest possible money’s worth out of the extensive buffet. It was still a “stamp it out in a factory producing four star breakfasts” fare but on an industrial scale.

While Dr T paid our ludicrously small bill for vats of wine and food last night, I descended into the depths of Mordor to retrieve and wash the bikes.

Hot, smelly and dank. I felt sorry for our bikes.

Back out in the entrance road to the hotel, we loaded the bikes and girded ourselves to get going. Next door to the entrance road is the pool, surrounded by loungers. At 7:30 in the morning, “Lounger Wars” were already beginning as florid and tubby old men faced off against each other for the right to put their lounger where they wanted. We departed as strong words started to float across the limpid waters of the pool.

Sometimes caricatures are true…and that’s ok.

Bad Gögging seems to consist of half a dozen hotels similar to the Monarch and…sort of nothing else. The hotels are as self contained as a cruise ship and so no economic activity beyond waitering and room cleaning really bleeds out into the surroundings. Hey ho, it’s economic activity nonetheless and Bad Gögging seemed pretty affluent.

Pretty soon we were out on the farm roads again and amid fields and fields of hops.

Hops (and asparagus) as far as the eye can see.

Bavaria produces nearly two fifths of all the world’s hops. Since there’s very little to do on a long distance we mused on what exactly hops are — they’re the strobiles or flowers of the plant — and we also mused about what the feathery dill like plant was that seemed to be planted alongside — it’s asparagus which has been let go wild because it attracts beneficial insects which pollinate the hops and also keep it healthy. Once the eating asparagus season is over, farmers leave some of the asparagus in the ground to grow up into low mounds that look for all the world like dill.

All this musing got us as far as the first section of gravel.

Dr T attempting to smile while faced with 10km of gravel.

We were heading to the Kloster Weltenburg Abbey where we wanted to get a boat through the Donaudurchbruch. The Kloster Weltenburg Abbey is the oldest abbey in Bavaria and since 1050, the oldest monastic brewery in the world.

There have been some monster floods here

Although the Abbey has been inundated to nearly 3m above the ground floor, today’s problem was somewhat different. Due to a lack of water, all boats down the gorge were cancelled. It did take us about 30 minutes to work this out since monks and religious pilgrims are not renowned for their knowledge of worldly things like boat timetables or indeed their focus on coming up with timely information to supply to two somewhat high-bandwidth and results-oriented people.

We did amuse ourselves watching a bloke sitting in a blow up armchair drift down the gorge. That seemed like a nice way to travel.

I suppose if the boats are cancelled, you might as well float down in an armchair.

Obviously this was disappointing because we weren’t going on the boat but it was also extra disappointing because we were going to have to cycle to Kelheim and that involved going over the top of the gorge.

Spot the pain.

It was worse than just grinding up a hill, it was through a forest on tiny forest tracks.

Beautiful but 15% and full of insects.

I’d like to report that Dr T and I flew up and down these challenging wooded trails like Mathieu van der Poel on his way to a cyclocross world championship but…sadly not. It was grim going up and terrifying going down. Full marks to the EuroVelo folks for finding this route but it was…challenging.

Eventually we bailed on the wooded path and took our chances out on the equally steep road which was lovely tarmac but had the downside of being a busy road in both directions. “Honk honk” went the trucks, “fuck off” went me. After a bit of a white knuckle ride we were back at the level of the Danube and also at the level of the truly amazing Rhine-Main-Donau canal.

The canal itself

This might not look like much but at this point, the canal which starts the Rhine/Main river basin, drops back down to the Danube and forms a single navigable waterway from the mouth of the Rhine in Rotterdam to the Danube delta in the Black Sea. At its highest point, it is 406m above sea level and is the highest point reachable by commercial craft anywhere on Earth. In principle, you could get in a pleasure cruiser in London, drive (sail?) across the North Sea and then head up the Rhine, follow the canal and then end up in the Black Sea a month or so later (not recommended since it’s a bit of a war zone).

I think it’s amazing and we had considered joining last year’s Rhine ride to the previous year’s Danube ride by riding along the canal but for various reasons this route was ditched in favour of the Donauquelle to Budapest.

Kelheim itself is not somewhere to write home about and we wove in and out of neat but featureless suburbs until we ended up back on the gravel paths along the Danube.

This was quite hard going.

We stopped for some refreshment at a Danube-side marina and continued on. Another stop for some lunch didn’t really add any energy to our legs and it was just a grind along the gravel until Regensburg came into sight.

See that, that’s Regensburg that is.

Regensburg is absolutely beautiful. A truly delightful city. I had rather feared that the Allied bombing campaigns of ‘44 and’ 45 could have turned Regensburg into some sort of 1960s concrete monstrosity (looking at you here Köln) but it appears that Curtis LeMay missed the old town and it’s still home to more than 1,500 listed buildings. We live in a fairly historic old town (Cambridge) but Regensburg definitely has the match of it and, who knows, maybe better. It’s bursting with gentile history and some outstanding buildings.

August is “repair a cathedral month”.

This is the remains of a Roman fort from AD79

I’ve avoided putting in too many pictures of the winding cobbled alleys and cool shops and bars in Regensburg. I know it’s unlikely that any reader of this blog is going to go to Regensburg on holiday but, if you do, you’ll be very pleasantly surprised.

We stayed at the Chin-Chin Boutique hotel. “Boutique” is always a load-bearing word when it comes to hotels but in this case…it was fabulous. Funky and friendly staff who took our hand-washed clothes and stuck them in a tumble drier and took our bikes out to the stores. It’s also very central. Which allowed us to do the first “bonkers museum” of the trip.

Regensburg is home to the world’s only Dachshund Museum. They have over 5,000 dachshund themed items from the tacky to the weird. Some photos below.

A lot of dachshunds on a sofa. With crowns. Why? Who knows.

Hundreds of Dachshund ornaments. Why? Who knows.

Elvis Dachshund. Why? Who knows.

Leonard Nimoy with a Dachshund. Why? Who knows.

Andy Warhol loved his Dachshund (called Archie). Mad eh?

When you put this in your Dachshund museum, you’ve run out out of decent Dachshund themed tat.

That’s enough Dachshund stuff.

We wandered around the town revelling in the fact that there were people there who were under the age of 70 (unlike the Monarch hotel yesterday). It’s a happening place: rich, trendy, growing fast. And because it is rich and trendy, Regensburg has a lot of world cuisines on offer. After some thought we plumped for Mexican and had some lovely enchiladas and tacos in a back street restaurant. Not what one expects in Bavaria but I expect there’s a lot of Wienerschnizel in our future…

So today was ok. I thought a shorter day would feel less wearing by the end but…no. Every day is a challenge. Tomorrow we head to Deggensdorf before we start to turn south with the Danube through the end of Germany, Austria and Slovakia. 90km, pretty flat, should be fine.

The Stats:

• Distance: 61km 🙂. If only every day was 61km
• Climbing: 274m 😕. Nothing in the scheme of things but on 15% forest tracks…not so easy.
• Average speed: 19km/h 😐. More gravel.
• Bikes: 😐. Still working although there are some odd squeaks from the brakes.
• Soft tissues: 😕. Everything “down there” seems fine but our hands are starting to take a beating on the gravel.

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