nbjtours

Day Five

Salzburg, Austria

86 miles 3120 ft climbed

Today was one of those great days cycling that we will remember for a long time. The weather was excellent and the scenery was truly picture perfect. Some of the views could not have been more typically Austrian if they tried. The key to this beauty was the colour green, the verdant mountainside pastures resplendent as bright as emeralds shining beneath the blue sky. Fabulous. The pictures don’t really do it justice.

Having decided to leave early, as soon as we had finished our compulsory porage, the first twenty-five miles continued our assault on the Inn valley.

It was quite a chilly start if we were not in the sun , and after a downhill start managed to warm up quickly as we sped along without a headwind making some good progress in the first hour and a quarter covering 20 odd miles.

What was noticeable as we rode down the ever maturing valley was it’s width and how the waters of the Inn calmed although it still ran quickly. We continued to share the valley with farms, the autoroute and the railway as the river got bigger.

Having crossed the Inn for the final time at Kufstein we shortly left the Inn valley for the first time in around 100 miles.

We then started a gradual climb up out of the valley alongside another river and this is where we started to see the Austria that we all think of with green grass and house balconies full of flowers with the mountains in the background.

Having decided to meet with Nigel & Monica by Walchsee the view and site did not disappoint. Few coffee stops will be as scenic. Even here Nigel took the locals to task for trying to charge him to park and he agreed not to pay!

We did see a bit more wildlife including some cranes in the fields and some autumn crocus too. Running along in the stunning scenery made cycling easier even if there were some more hills to climb.

As ever most of the riding was on dedicated tarmac cycle paths until we approached the German border when we had a couple of miles on a main road before crossing the border and turning off into the woods and we then had a few kilometres on rough gravel tracks including an additional hill added for Nick.

Whizzing down the first of several hills Nigel had set up our lunch stop at what he thought was a disused railway station only to find there were two trains an hour in each direction!

We remained in Germany until almost the end of the day as the border is on the outskirts of Salzburg. This means we will now stay in Austria until next Monday after our weekend break in Vienna. We will have completed by then the East to West crossing of the country.

Coming down from the high hills we had several great sweeping but not too steep descents and a couple of short climbs which again were great fun.

Crossing our final river of the day brought us into the outskirts of Salzburg and back into Austria where we had a short five miles on to the campsite.

This evening pork schnitzel, coleslaw & potatoes was followed by stewed plums with ice cream. Who needs a restaurant. Monica had even found the requisite German Beer.

So five days down and two and a half more to Vienna. The sun has promised to shine some more.