Wachau

Our final day's cycling (well, that's me, C and K) was through the beautiful Wachau valley, known for its vineyards (see above the village of Dürnstein in the blip), its apricots (see the extras - Marille is the word Austrians use for apricot) and its pretty villages (see blip). Our mooring point in the morning (having left Vienna about 10.30pm on Saturday night) was not the one originally suggested, so in order to see Dürnstein we had to use the ferry across the river, and then turn left, back downstream, and cycle for about 5 kms to get the view I've blipped from a campsite across the way. It was a beautiful ride, but it popped a few more kilometres into the legs.... We then set off back upstream, into an increasingly nasty headwind and deteriorating weather conditions, for quite a long cycle to Pöchlarn.

We did stop a couple of times for shlucks of water and a snack, and on one occasion we met some people from our "sister boat", the Arlene. The Arlene was supposed to be going all the way to Budapest (we'd considered this option, but for personal reasons I had vetoed a return visit to Budapest at this stage...), but made it only as far as Bratislava, with one whole day where they never made it off the boat to cycle. There had been mutiny, unsurprisingly....

We made it in time (despite encountering a nasty shower between Melk and Pöchlarn, and wind that almost made you go backwards), but the boat did not, so Mr A missed the winetasting at a hotel in Pöchlarn. This was over more quickly than we would have liked as everyone had to cycle back to the boat, which by then had made it to dock. As we arrived, the bikes were whipped off us and reloaded onto the sundeck through an impressive human chain of boat personnel, and we were away within 5 minutes of arriving back on board.

A fun last evening ensued, with lots of chats and quite a few numbers and email addresses exchanged. And more wine, of course.