Late Addition: August 26th Stage 28 Neuburg to Kapfelberg

 August 26^th  Stage 28 Neuburg to Kapfelberg  77 kms

Heavy rain again during the night but the campsite appeared less noisome in the early sunshine, in fact quite attractive. Already nearly a day ahead of schedule we aimed for an easier 70 kms or so.

The road runs literally straight (for almost five kilometres) out of Neuburg to the Grunau royal hunting lodge; very good for warming up. The next 20 kilometres to Ingolstadt were splendid, most of them through the fields and silver birch forests of the lodge’s hunting grounds, deserted this morning except for a surprising number of joggers and other cyclists, not all of them young by any means. One grey-haired gentleman was hurtling through the woods, arms akimbo, orange cardigan flying in the wind.

Ingolstadt, this Sunday morning, was very animated, and a cappacino and a croissant in the sunshine in one or the cafés below the Rathausplatz were difficult to resist. The guide book recommends vigilance in following the bike route through the town but it seemed to me that the streets were no less confusing than in most of the other towns, and streets such as Theresian Strasse with its outdoor cafes quite grand.

We chose to follow the river as closely as possible for the next longish section of the ride to the Weltenburg Abbey. The levee provides a good gravel surface for most of the way until the final section after Eining where it narrows to two rutted strips for several kilometres. The poor condition of the track, though, is more than made up for by the magnificent position, isolated, very close to  the water with the first cliffs of the Weltenburg gorge not far ahead.

Weltenburg itself, though, was a brutal shock. First an enormous car park followed by the crowds who had left their cars to walk the 500 metres to the Abbey, supposedly the oldest in Bavaria. I must say that there was little of holiness on display. Almost the entire courtyard of the abbey was taken up with trestle table after trestle table of people drinking the abbey’s famous dark beer. Tourists wandered bemusedly in and out of St George’s church, many of them like us perhaps, not quite sure what to make of this baroque interior. For us, perhaps the most curious thing of all was a small figurine of (presumably) the sculptor, looking down from the crown of gold on which all the other figures were angels or cherubs, circling the magnificent painted ceiling, with what I can only describe as a rather mocking, self-satisfied grin. Very strange. All over the church are ugly eruptions of stone which eventually we worked out are meant to be clouds. And over the altar an enormous ornate statue of St George killing the dragon!

The guide book strongly recommends taking one of the boats through the gorge to Kelheim. For cyclists this saves 6 kilometres and more importantly avoids a steep hill with heavy traffic. The gorge is reputed to be well worth seeing. This placed me in something of a dilemma. My objective is to cover every centimetre to the Black Sea actually on my bicycle, unless it is impossible to do otherwise (which is why I didn’t take the ferry across the Bodensee). Yet, like most people, I loathe riding unnecessarily in dense traffic.  However, I resolved the problem by eschewing the road and climbing very steeply straight  out of the monastery courtyard on the “”wanderweg” to Kelheim which was not only an interesting, though straightforward, VTT ride but far from being intimidated by traffic I saw not one car until I reached the bridge over the river in Kelheim. Another, perhaps even better alternative would have been to have taken the small wooden ferry just upstream from the Abbey and ridden along the footpath on the other side of the gorge. 

The usual search for a campsite ensued. We hoped to rediscover something more along the lines that we had been used to in France and we found it at Kapfelberg and at half the price!

77kms   Total  from Schaffhausen 412 kms  Total from Galway  2318 kms