Day 3

Breakfast was at 8:30 and I took a nice early-morning walk in the otherwise completely empty town, it was a pretty one.

Now came the breakfast...due to Corona, they did not serve a buffet (unlike the day before, in Hollenstein), but each of us gut their wonderful servings of: breads, spreads, vegetables, cheese, ham - any order of eggs (I had a tasty omelet), juices, yogurt, muesli, fruit salad and marmalade. As Georg said, we should have just sat around the entire day and continued eating...I had to agree with him. After this, I made the colossal mistake of opening the door to the 2000m² garden, as the host showed each detail to me, then to Florian, then Georg, then Dominik...much to my back luck, our hotel was the meeting point for the other two groups and as they were wandering in, they all had to take a look at the garden. By the way, a single room there cost only 37 euros - alone the breakfast was close to that value...The place is called "Gästezimmer Petra Schabel-Zehetner" - and I can definitely recommend it!

Finally, when everyone inspected the garden, we left, close to around 11 am. Maybe we should have stayed, we even had a VIP parking!

Florian and I were riding upfront. Little did we know that we'd make the 30 or so downhill kilometers to Pöchlarn in no time, even though we'd taken a rest in Wieselburg. Well, two things happened to the group behind us: first, some of them rode through a gorge of the Erlauf river, where no biking was possible, so they had to carry their bikes for a while, the other is that Felix borrowed Jonas' bike, which he managed to mess up and it took like 45 minutes to get it back in working condition. The folks going through the gorge were raving about it - so it is yet another motivation to make a booking in Scheibbs.

The two of us waited (im)patiently in Pöchlarn, where the Erlauf flows into the Danube. It took over an hour for Barbara and Dominik to show up and then yet another twenty minutes for the rest of the group. Now the kids were getting hungry and the group decided to take a rest right there.

For those that know me well, that was a no-go. I had already waited for well over an hour - nope, it was time for some serious bike riding. Home in Vienna was 85 kilometers heading directly west and about 110 km when following the Danube till Krems through Wachau (a much nicer option) and then heading southeast from there. After making a British exit (jumping on my bike, without saying a lot of farewell to the others), I went for that.

It was a great solo ride and am happy to have done it. I crossed the Danube, rode past Melk, many small towns in Wachau, Dürnstein, Stein, Krems - then crossed the Danube again - and headed for my house.

The last few kilometers over the Riederberg were a bit challanging - I was happy to have made it home just before it had gotten dark - was there somewhere after 8:30 pm...

Summary

Again, a big thanks to Georg and Florian for organizing this tour, it was a lot of fun! We experienced the nature, had culinary highlights (and one lowlight...), enjoyed each others company and rode (more or less) as a group together - I am looking forward to many more such trips! CU in the fall on the hike and next year again on the bike. And in case you have made it so far, thanks for reading! 😃

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