After an early morning (7am) walk along the shore of Lake Lipno. Decided to have breakfast in the town. But, as nothing opened until 11(!), we headed off on empty stomachs. Not a problem.
But, before that, I noticed that Jackie’s back tyre was low so I decided to change the tube. Whilst I was doing this, she asked if there was anything she could do to help. I told her she could check the tyre pressures on my bike. The next minute she told me that she’d broken my valve! So, after changing her tube I then had to change mine. Norman Wisdom would have been more help.
Eventually, we took the ferry across to the far side of the lake and then headed west. It was time to leave the Iron Curtain Trail and after leaving Czecho again, we passed through a sliver of Austria and into SE Bavaria.
After about 15mls, we found somewhere to breakfast (just coffee and ‘birnenkuchen’, a kind of poached pear cake). It was very nice and quite enough.
Then spent most of the day cycling through really nice countryside. Mostly downhill. Some hills so deliriously steep that you could rapidly reach 50km/hr plus just by freewheeling.
Reached the German city of Passsau by 5pm.
But, Jackie’s bike gears we’re playing up again. It looks like the bike shop in Vienna had made things worse. Pity we’re not going back there to remonstrate.
Another bike shop. Another mechanic. This guy appears to know what he’s doing and was happy to drop what he was working on and (hopefully) sort it out.
But then...he ran out of time (locking up time had come and I think his wife was on the phone). So the guy had to lock up and go before finishing the job (he was actually about to go on holiday himself in the morning ).
We’d have to come back the following day when his colleague will finish the job. Not until late though: 10am! Going to be a delayed start. Drat.
Surprising, our progress west has remained on target, despite having to deal with the bikes’ mechanical difficulties. We clocked up around 80k today.
Had a spot of difficulty locating the Station Hotel in Passau (an Hotel that I’d booked earlier today on Trivago). Went to the wrong place at first. The receptionist at ‘the other station hotel’ pointed us in the right direction. Turns out that the (cheap) hotel I’d booked earlier today wasn’t next to the train station: it was the train station. Whatever, we now have a ‘functional’ twin room, right above Platform 2.
We’ll probably get woken up tomorrow by the Four-Nineteen to Wernstein.
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On the plus side - Passau looks to be a great place!