Day 3: Linz to Passau 98km

Arriving in Passau and crossing the border in Germany has reminded me of the funniest thing I ever heard a German say (surprisingly they are much funnier than stereotypes might suggest). I was sitting in a hotel in Istanbul with a German and an Austrian. The Austrian had arrived the day before and had spent her time wandering around the city following a guidebook. The German intended to stay on for an extra day and do the same after our business meeting. The Austrian woman said to him in German 'if you like you can borrow my guidebook'. The German for guide is literally 'führer' so she said in German, 'would you like to borrow my führer?'. To which he replied, "No thanks, the last time you did that it didn’t work out so well for us". Now you might not know that Adolf Hitler was born in Austria near the border with Germany and that his father was a border guard, but you probably did know that he was Austrian not German by birth. But by any accounts that is a fucking funny joke.

Edit: I totally forgot to write that I had a brilliant and cheap Airbnb to stay at in Linz. Then discovered the reason why it was cheap was that it was next to a church that rang its bells every 15 minutes and did a full 2 minutes worth at 6am. Despite that, I woke up in a good mood thanks to the sunshine.

Today was the kind of day I planned for and hoped for: right up to the moment it wasn’t. When I googled top 10 things to do in Linz Austria, top of the list was to visit the Ars Electronica Museum, the self-styled 'museum of the future.' As luck would have it the museum was only 50 m from where I was staying so I had to go and visit. Honestly, I could’ve spent a couple of more hours in there but I had to check out by 11am and needed to get on the road.

I was quickly out of the city and riding in the sunshine along the river. I had been looking forward to this section at is as famous as the most beautiful of the whole of the route and it did not disappoint. Some people might say that riding along a dedicated bikepath next to a river for kilometre after kilometre is boring, but I really enjoyed the fact that I could just ride and think and not have to worry about traffic of any sort. Apart from the occasional cyclist coming round a blind bend on the wrong side of the path that is.

One thing I promised myself on this trip is that if I see something different, new or unusual I will take the time to film it or photograph it and today I did just that. You’ll have to wait to see the video to see all the sights and sounds I recorded, but I really enjoyed myself.

One of the aspects of riding alongside the river is that there are occasional single houses sitting in secluded spots just back from the riverbank. I found myself wondering what those people did for work. If you’re old enough then I had the voice of Lloyd Grossman in my ear saying 'who lives in a house like this?' The kilometers clicked by easily I was enjoying the sunshine and the quiet, occasionally stopping for a rest or to take a photo, or to have a yet another Coke. At one point I met the first smiling Austrian I had seen all week, but he turned out to be an immigrant from the Philippines and he was a very nice chap and polite about my terrible German.

At about 80km I started to flag, and the last 20 km of the day went back to being difficult and not particularly enjoyable.

At some point later in the day I had passed into Germany without realising it, and the path had switched to the opposite side of the river and was frankly less interesting. With 10k to go I was really flagging and then as if by magic the city of Passau appeared like some German Camelot on a bend in the river and I livened up. A bit. Still, I had to stop 5km from my destination to give myself a talking to.

Something needs to change if I’m going to make this trip work. The obvious things are to lessen the weight I’m carrying by getting rid of some of the extra kit I am taking and secondly to reduce the distances I'm riding.

Sitting having a curry on the riverside in Passau, it was hard to admit to myself that I have made lots of mistakes in my planning that I could easily have avoided, and I’ve been over ambitious about the distances I could ride. I’ve been comparing this trip to the one that I did home from Milan and kept thinking why can’t I ride the same way I did then? That trip was eight years ago and a lot has happened in eight years, not least of which is that I’ve got older . Now some of you reading this may say 'you just got to push yourself harder to get through it' but I think the reality is I should’ve made 80 to 100km the daily target and not picked any days where it s beyond 100km. It occurred to me when I was riding into town today I found completing the Festive 500 hard in the last two years and that’s only 62km a day for eight days, so what made me think I could ride more than 100km a day for 16 days? Some rethinking will be done overnight, and I’ll let you know what I do tomorrow .

Distance ridden so far - 252km

Earworm of the day - Never smile at a crocodile (Nope. I have no idea why)