Well, we had the best nights sleep last night, even if a night-time pee required a trip outside to the facilities. But that's camping! Half the reason for the good sleep was the fact that the barrel had a window by our heads and one at the other end thereby ensuring a free flow of air through the room. The big problem with continental windows (and I know I've ranted about this before, but bear with me as I get it off my chest again) is that they always open inwards. This means that you can't have the window open at night AND have the curtains closed. Madness! Also, a wide open window INTO the room almost guarantees a black eye or broken nose when stumbling to the bathroom in the dark. As a consequence, a hotel that starts off hot stays hot, all night! Not conducive to a good sleep for a couple that have their bedroom window open at home until the temperature drops below -5C.
Refreshed, we ate our breakfast of nutty croissant bought at the bakery the day before, and a free coffee-to-go, that we weren't expecting, that came as part of our night's deal. Departure was the earliest yet along the flood dyke then onto good tarmac that we thrummed along at e-bike-defeating speed. We found our first pothole today. 10 days of cycling and one pothole! Ecstasy! And it was only a small one on a gravel road. I nearly took a picture but the power station that came next was much more interesting. Is it a nuke? Not seen one like this before. We raced on before they could loose the dogs until we stopped in Vohburg for coffee and doughnuts. Then it was onwards to Neustadt with a little unplanned diversion around the town until we reached Bad Gogging for a lunch special pizza each. Only half was consumed as we expected no eating places at our destination, so the other half was saved for tea! On we rode to Weltenburg where we cheated the 150m climb up and over the shoulder of the gorge by taking the ferry boat down the river. It was a shorter that intended cheat as the water level is so low that its normal berth at Kelheim was unusable. Coffee and apple pie was consumed on reaching Kelheim, then it was onward to our apartment hotel in Bad Abbach which we reached by 16:25. Its interesting to see that downstream of Kelheim the river is clearly wider and deeper as we have passed an extensive marina, and seen several commercial cargo boats like those we saw on the Rhine. The day has been dry and quite warm so we arrived tired with 2 days of laundry to do ... and a soggy half pizza to eat. But we do have a balcony and a beautiful garden to overlook. In fact on arrival our hostess insisting on giving us cold beer to drink in the garden and then we had a guided tour of her proudly grown veg and herbs - she is very enthusiastic!
43.5 miles at 10.1 mph avg. 4 hrs 20 mins moving time to ascend 191m, mostly up and down bridges and flood dykes.
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