Day 6: Regensburg to Deggendorf

Today was surprisingly ok. Much cooler than the last few days and an easy 90km.

Exiting Regensburg through the medieval gate

The Chin Chin hotel was absolutely superb. Staying in the centre of the city did involve some crazies going mad outside our window at 2am but that’s the cost of being cool I guess.

Breakfast was served sitting outside the hotel on the street watching the world go by.

There’s a vaguely Parisian vibe to Regensburg. Don’t tell the French…

And what a breakfast it was. I know you come to the blog for the stories of cycling and close shaves with lorries and heat death but this is a breakfast.

No room in the picture for the basket of bread products either.

As we rolled away from the Chin Chin — gently burping cheese and ham — we were sorry to say goodbye to Regensburg. It was surprisingly fantastic. Although it is tempting to think “we must come back”, it’s also important to be realistic. Part of the fun/joy of these types of trips is discovering places that, to be honest, you’re probably never going to go back to but which are completely delightful. Poznań in Poland for example or Potsdam in Germany on previous trips.

It was cool in the morning and we made good time along the now familiar smooth tarmac paths.

Very familiar and very welcome

At one point we passed the tourist attraction of Walhalla.

Clearly at the top of a very steep hill so we didn’t visit.

It really is worth clicking on the link because this is an absolutely bonkers place. It’s a reproduction of the Athenian Parthenon and was commissioned by King Ludwig I as a pantheon of Germanic heroes. It is   entirely constructed of marble and contains 130 busts and 65 plaques celebrating the great and the good of Germanic-speaking peoples. Loads of them are clearly German (Beethoven, Bismark, Goethe, Gutenberg and…obviously…Ludwig I himself) there are also a few rather tenuously Germanic busts such as Alfred the Great, William of Orange, Rubens and the Venerable Bede. However bonkers and interesting this would have been, it was at the top of an extremely steep hill and so we passed by on our bikes and took a photo.

The kilometers went down pretty quickly.  It was a good 15 degrees cooler than yesterday which really helped.

Wörth an der Donau is another random place with an amazing schloss

We stopped for a coffee and had a cake.

This is known as a Napoleonhut. It’s not very tasty.

Everything was going very well: temperature good, not too much gravel, nice paths but then we hit this rather depressing sight.

Oh, things are going off the rails now.

To be fair to Germany, there had been signs indicating the the road ahead was closed but in typical fashion, I had ignored them. I probably would have tried to just sneak through the building site had I been on my own but Dr T’s wisdom prevailed and we backtracked.

It was a choice between a 12km diversion on quiet country roads and paths or toughing it out on 4km of very busy a roads to get to Bogen. Although Dr T is a lot more sensible than me normally, she opted for the time-trial along the busy road. There are limits to being sensible and an extra 8km of cycling is definitely too much. I have a pathetic flashing light in my helmet so I took up the rear and hoped that the speeding car and lorry drivers would register the flashing light as somebody going approximately a fifth of their speed. We survived but there were some very close calls.

In Bogen there were some more diversions and road works.

Pants.

In Bogen, we found a truly lovely little bakery run by an insanely cheerful little lady and drank some iced tea and lemonade to recover. I know this is a recurring theme in this blog but literally every single person we have met so far has been incredibly charming and helpful.

After Bogen, it was just 25k to the end. Easy kilometers on a mixture of gravel and cycleways. Although Deggendorf appeared a little down-at-heel on the way in, the route led us to the Leopoldplatz which is charming and lined with restaurants and bars. Our hotel is on the square and an almost psychotically happy young lady told us where to leave our bikes and the directions to the bar.

We washed our kit and headed out for a walk. Deggendorf is…nice. Sort of the analogue of St Albans or something. A few nice restaurants and  a bit of a historic central area. Like all towns, it has one of these pole things which, despite my friend Rosa explaining it to me, are still a bit of a German mystery.

A big pole. Some shields. A fixture in every town and village.

After a desultory wander round the centre of Deggendorf, we decided to eat at our lovely hotel, the Gastoff Höttl. The food was fantastic although some of the Bavarian specialities seemed a step too far.

I’ll pass on the lung vielen dank.

So today was a sort of drama free day. Easy cycling, no rotisserie chicken temperatures, a decent but not overly long distance.

Tomorrow is our last day in Germany. We have 60 relatively easy kilometers to Passau which contains the world’s second largest organ. Woo hoo. And then…Austria.

The Stats:

• Distance: 90km 🙂. Perfect distance.
• Climbing: 238m 🙂. Nothing of note.
• Average speed: 20km/h 😐. No point in rushing
• Bikes: 😐. The beans are performing well but my bar tape has started to unravel and the “front bean” is rubbing on the front tyre. Hopefully can fix this tomorrow.
• Soft tissues: 😐. A couple of knee twinges are a bit worrying but we’ll see how tomorrow goes.

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