Sunset over Altenwörth lock

Mr A joined us for the cycling today, which was supposed to be straightforward. It was (at least in route-finding terms), but it was also stressful at times, like sharing a quiet country road with some people in BMWs who thought that 100 kph was an appropriate speed. We stopped at a superb bakery in Ybbs, which was a town which otherwise we didn't find particularly charming. The second half of the cycling to Melk was in full sun on the right bank and we struggled a bit to deal with the heat and the brightness. A beer at a riverside café in Pöchlarn helped with the final push. After locating the boat, the others rested, but I popped in to Melk on the bike, and reminded myself that I visited the famous Stift when I was about 12 and staying with a penfriend in Vienna. The rest of the village was just touristy and not very charming. I didn't pay up big time to revisit the Stift, but picked up some supplies of water from the supermarket (my one beef with the boat was that apart from the tap water, which was free, drinkable, but a bit "tepid", the cost of bottled water for dinner or to drink in the bar was rather inflated).

We had drinks and dinner on the boat as we drifted gently down the Danube towards our destination Tulln, and not long before that we reached Altenwörth lock and power station, as the sun was setting. As I'd struggled to take photographs I really liked until then (no extras today), it was my last burst of photography of the day which supplied my blip.

50 kms of cycling in full sunshine tired me out, and I was in the land of nod shortly after we arrived in Tulln just before 10pm. I didn't manage to get either Wednesday or Thursday's blips uploaded as we travelled along as we appeared to be located in the Upper Austria (or was it Lower Austria?) internet desert. No signal at all, for most of the time.