Day 9: Linz to Melk

This was a long and, by the end, a tough day.

The main square early in the morning in Linz.

Our “boutique” hotel managed to do the business overnight with decent aircon although, once again, a non-functional heated towel rail. We had a filling breakfast while sitting in our slightly moist kitchen and, after some necessary bike maintenance, we were on the road around 7:30.

We negotiated the terrifying urban tram tracks and young people stumbling back from a long and obviously enjoyable Saturday night.  We crossed the river onto the northern bank where there was a lovely riparian park with people running, walking and playing with dogs. It was very pleasant and a lot more salubrious than the other side bank of the river which was heavily industrialised.

This was perfect in the early morning.

The southern bank had more of a Mordor-on-the-Danube vibe with blast furnaces and large industrial facilities. For those of you missing the gravel pile photos of last year’s Rhine trip, there were a lot of gravel, coke and iron ore piles.

A big pile of coal.

We had a long way to go and the EV6 Donauradweg was very busy on a Sunday morning. There were, of course, the serious cyclists on €10,000 bikes whizzing along but also an extraordinary number of people on e-bikes.

E-bikes are very popular in Germany and Austria. In some of the hotels we have stayed in there might be 20 or 30 e-bikes in the faradgarage compared to our two slightly sad looking non-e-bikes. It’s easy to be sniffy about them — and indeed curse under your breath as the effortlessly pass you at 25km/h — but they have really opened up cycling to a huge number of people. As has been the case on every day so far on this trip, a lot of alder and definitely less fit people were out in the sun pootling along on a Sunday jaunt to the next town. I think they are brilliant and seem to be revolutionising urban and peri-urban mobility in Germany.

A busy Sunday on the Donauradweg.

There was a lot of this sort of path-based cycling. Occasionally the route along the Danube was livened up by giant metal statues of a zander.

It appears that zander is a type of pike. It’s very popular in riparian restaurants.

We stopped at around 25km in Malthausen for a coffee. This is a pretty nondescript sort of town with a very very dark past. There was a memorial which we could have visited but today was a long day and there’s definitely a feeling “that was a long time ago” so let’s move on.

By now the heat was rising and there was still a long way to go. We saw one of the many (empty) cruise ships navigating a lock — which I find fascinating but I suspect others may not.

Isn’t amazing that big boats can be lifted just with water power? Ok, maybe not.

There were some short sections through woods which were shaded and lovely.

Not nearly as hairy now! Thanks overpriced Linz barber!

We crossed to the southern bank of the Danube around Grein and from there on it was just 70km of very hot and very boring cycle paths. The temperature hit 35C which is well below what we were suffering four or five days before but it’s still very debilitating indeed.

There was a lot of this. Miles and miles and miles of it.

By the time we had reached Ybbs (yes, there are many towns in the world without vowels in their names…mostly in Wales it appears) we were flagging a lot and so we decided to break our “no-lunch” rule and get some sustenance on board. Ybbs seemed shut — what with it being Sunday and all — but hidden on the other side of an archway was an absolutely lovely courtyard restaurant with friendly staff and Austrian food on offer.

My first foray into Würst resulted in deep-fried

cheese-filled frankfurters wrapped in bacon.

Dr T had deep fried camembert which was probably a better choice than the odd cheesy würst but I did drink a litre of zero-alcohol beer which went down very well indeed.

The only interesting thing on the journey was a little tiny Stonehenge.

Very Spinal Tap…

The last 30km were just brutal. For the entire day we had been fighting a strong headwind and as the landscape opened out, it was blasting us in the face continuously. It’s really hard to keep your speed up in the face of a headwind and by the time we reached Melk, we were limping along.

I had booked the Hotel Wachau. Rather foolishly, I hadn’t checked where exactly the Wachau hotel was in Melk. It turned out that it was 1.5km up a very long and very steep cobbled hill. I cursed my foolishness as we ground up out of the pretty medieval town into the big box store hinterland, passed under a motorway and ended up at a rather run down looking building surrounded by weeds and some broken down trailers. I went to check in and a very unhelpful guy gave me my key and when I asked about getting a drink, he said “No drinks, no food. Today is Sunday, the restaurant and bar are shut”. This is a hotel which has a four star rating. I put on my “angry eyes” and explained my disappointment about the food and drink situation. The bloke suggested that we could walk into town (1.5km) to get something to eat. I mean, yes, we probably could have but that’s not what you expect to hear having paid the thick end of €200 to a four star hotel. Grumpy and angry I got out booking.com and booked somewhere else in Melk and the manageress then got into an argument with me about how it was unfair not to stay at their hotel even though I explained that they could take the paid for room and do something biologically impossible with it. The booking.com review will not be good.

We rolled back down the hill to the Hotel zur Post which has a lovely woman on the desk who directed us to the open bar where we could rehydrate and showed us their very nice faradgarage. The room is airconditioned and about 1 million times better than the Wachau.

Happy person outside the Hotel zur Post which is not the Hotel Wachau.

Melk is dominated by the huge Stift Melk Benedictine abbey. It sits on a stone bluff some 50m above the town. It is regarded as the epitome of baroque Austrian architecture and it also represents the cradle of the Austrian nation. It was constructed in the early 18th century and has outstanding frescoed ceilings and an amazing library. During the Anschluss it was confiscated by the state but was returned to the monks after the Second World War and now houses more than 900 pupils.

It really does dominate this quiet little town.

We wandered around Melk, took some photos and then returned to the Hotel zur Post for some traditional Austrian fare.

Never eat anything larger than your head…

There was even a shared icecream afterwards because…we’re worth it.

This was a tough day. Hot and long. There are always “transition days” on trips like this where you’re really just going from A to B so that you can eventually get to C. Or in our case, L to M so that we can eventually get to V.

The annoyance and disappointment of the Hotel Wachau was easily solved — admittedly at the cost of two hotel nights in Melk.  That is a cost we were more than happy to bear and revenge will be sweet when it comes to the booking.com review.

Tomorrow is a final long day into Vienna and after that, we’re on the final stretch. There is an impending dental problem which I’m hoping will just go away due to the magic of the human immune system but tonight will be the test.

The Stats:

• Distance 112.5km 😕. Hard to do much more than this in the heat. Also includes a very annoyed 1.7km from the Hotel Wachau to the Hotel zur Post.
• Average Speed: 19.2km/h ☹️. We had a headwind of ~20km/h all day and that just kills any thoughts of speed.
• Bikes ☹️. My bike needs new brake pads for the rear brakes because it’s squeaking all the time. This is very distressing but I doubt there’s much I can do about it.
• Soft tissues ☹️. Mostly holding up but there’s an incipient dental problem brewing on the upper east side (© John Self in Money) which could cause some problems…

Plus an annoyed little 1.7km ride here.

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