Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Day 5: Wed 1 Jun - Vienna to Bad Deutsch Altenburg

Ride: 60km

Although we arrived in Vienna 3 days ago and have been on a couple of nice rides, it doesn't really feel like we have yet started a cycling tour.  Today is THE day; pack our bikes and ride out with all our "stuff" on board. One last yummy breaky at the Mercure Motel and on our way. 

Great to be on the bike. The ride out of Vienna was a breeze, literally, as we had a lovely tail wind all day. The mainly off-road bike paths made the trip today an absolute pleasure.  At one stage the bike path was so wide and straight that you could have landed a B747 on it. Even Wendy would have been happy to be riding today, nice smooth paths, flat as a tack with a tail wind; cyclists' heaven!  

There were predictions of showers but true to form of Weather Forecasters everywhere thankfully they got it wrong as it was fine and sunny.   

Our accommodation tonight is clean and very neat and a couple of km from a significant Roman Ruin - Petronell Carnuntum - including a couple of nice amphitheatre. This quiet little village is on the banks of the Danube and is picture perfect.  

No mishaps or problems today except the members of the team with paper maps had to prevent the three guys with fancy GPSs from getting us lost. Call me old fashion but I've never had a map run out of batteries yet and as long as you orientate the map correctly and keep an eye on your location it will not lead you up too many dead-end roads or take you on a wild goose chase.  And it is much quicker with a map.

Tomorrow we cross our first border to enter Slovakia briefly before crossing into Hungary a couple of hours later.  

Saw the strangest sight today - we came over a rise to see two people (a man and a woman) picking wild fruit. As we drew nearer we saw that the lady was fairly old and was wearing some form of lose fitting jump-suit. Then we did a double take as the old lady was wearing absolutely nothing, except a very dark all-over tan. We hoped that there weren't any green ants (if they have such a thing in Austria) in the cherry tree they were raiding.  Each to his or her own, she didn't appear to be doing anyone any harm.

1,000 year old (parts of it) Church at Bad Deutsch Altenburg (BDA)

Cemetery at BDA

An Austrian country house



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