September 4th Stage 36 Tulln – Vienna – Tulln 76 kms
Today’s ride from Tulln to the Kunsthistoriche Museum on the
Ringstrasse in the centre of Vienna was much more enjoyable than I had
anticipated. The first 25 kilometres or so follows a paved pathway along the
bank of the river and through woodland and some small villages. The town of
Klosterneuburg with its impressive abbey looked to be very pleasing. Then the
city itself came upon me suddenly. One moment I was in more or less
countryside, the next moment I had entered quite a different world of
underpasses, metal cycle pistes hanging over the river, old barges, masses of
concrete every square centimetre of which was covered in graffiti, some of it
artistic, some of it alarming.
Cyclists were everywhere, most of them
travelling at speed, appearing unexpectedly from the innumerable cycle tracks
that joined my main Euro 6 route and careering dangerously around the pillars
and blocks that required some care to negotiate. If you can’t beat them, join
them; so I picked up speed and began to enjoy myself, almost fooling myself I
was a local as I raced along the canal bank, past some morose fishermen,
weaving in and out of slower cyclists and pedestrians. In fact, I was going so
quickly that I overshot my exit point from the canal quay to the city roads
proper at Urania Strasse and had to retrace my steps and find my way on to the
Ring Strasse. Here again the bicycle traffic was moving at some speed on the
excellent cycle piste that winds all the way around the Ring Strasse.
In the evening I retraced my steps, for reasons I will
explain in the next blog. If anything the cycle traffic was even more manic,
especially as the regular commuters had now been joined by serious cyclists
training for “the next big race”, or so it seemed. And not alone either.
Sometimes there would be groups of nine or ten hurtling along the narrow
crowded piste. But there were no accidents and everyone was very patient and
tolerant. However, I was quickly out of the city, left the Donau Kanal and back
next to the river proper. It was a delightful ride along the embankment in the
late afternoon sunshine back to our camping in Tulln. An excellent day of
serious cycling and equally serious (and perhaps more tiring) exploration in
the Kunsthistorische Museum.
76 kms From
Schaffhausen 939 kms From Galway 2847
kms
In Austria I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to
become a real tourist, seeing as many of the sights as I could. Melk and
Durnstein stand out and I was really pleased to see the site of the discovery
of the Willendorf Venus, having taught this Neolithic period and showed
pictures of her to many a class. It was great to revisit Vienna, SUCH a grand
city and to concentrate this time on the art museums. We’ve enjoyed a fair few
sacher torters, apfel strudels and wiener schnitzels but sadly no
kaiserschmarrens this time. The Danube flows swiftly past this small
gasthaus but is still a muddy brown (I think Strauss must have been overly
imaginative.) There is a lot of traffic up and down, the tourist boats, the
huge, long barges and even commuter hydrofoils on this last section coming from
Bratislava. Tomorrow we’ll leave for Hungary. The route will include a few
kilometres in Slovakia though I’ll see nothing of Bratislava as I’ll be choosing
the easy option, as I did with Vienna, of taking the motorway round the city.
Katherine
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