Biking Day 1

• Length ridden: 123 km
• Ascent: 1,170 meters
• Rating: 6.0 out of 10 - somewhat dull, not all too exciting
• Highlights: towns and villages in Tyrol
• Lowlight: rain in the morning
• Map of the day

Early in the morning, with departure before 6 am, I took a WestBahn train from Vienna Hütteldorf to Salzburg, which was uneventful. I thought of getting off earlier, in Attnang-Puchheim, with the goal of visiting the Salzkammergut lakes, but I ended up deciding against it. There I was still in the mindset of reaching Ireland, so I figured it would be beneficial to get 70 kilometers closer to my potential final destination.

It was a rather grey weather when I started my first few kilometers towards the west and soon I left the busy city. Now I was on a road where I had been before - the one leading to Untersberg, the picturesque house mountain of Salzburg. No, I did not hike up there this time, Google made me turn to some small roads, which even turned unpaved. I was not all too happy, was not sure which Silicon Valley developer tagged this rather boring patch of road as "bike road", but oh well, things like these do happen. My mood did not improve when it started drizzling, it was time to put a jacket on. This was a start which was "worthy" of a Day 1 ride - on many of my trips, the first day turns out to be rather dull. The thing that keeps me going, though, is that all my trips, without exception, turned out to be beautiful...so that kept my hopes high.

The rain did not last long and I was back on a nice, paved road when I reached the very first pretty destination on this trip - this was the Marian Pilgrimage Church of Grossmain - with origins going back to the 15th century. There were votive images, which are apparently famous.

After the visit to the church, I crossed into Germany, all that was there was a small yellow sign proclaiming it to be a different country. This area is referred to in Austria as the "Kleines Deutsches Eck", the "Small German Corner" in free translation.

I was on the outskirts of Bad Reichenhall and swore again a bit at Google - had I followed the official bike path, it would have taken me there directly. The one more reason for swearing was a bit of a cracking noise coming from the axis of the pedals - even though I made sure to have my bike thoroughly checked out for the trip, this noise was not to be overheard. I spotted a busy bike shop, even though it was an overcast Monday morning, a bunch of customers were lined up for renting e-bikes to discover the Berchtesgaadener area. I waited (im)patiently, the guy came, he made a number of small adjustments and the noise was gone - at least for a while, as I found out later. So the €10 was a bit unjustified.

I was now on a very pretty bike road, next to a lake called Saalachsee. The area was pretty, I spotted churches with onion-shaped tops, typical of Bavaria.

My visit to Germany ended with a small sign, crossing out Germany and now I was back to Austria, following the river Saalach, and was now on a bike path I had ridden on with a group of friends a couple of years ago. The one bank was rather challenging and narrow - and as I had already been there back then, I chose the other side, where progress was easier. At around lunch-time, I reached the pretty town of Lofer, had a quick bite in a park. I had spent a few nice days there on that bike trip with my friend, staying in the city, I had pleasant memories. For those not knowing Lofer, it is a pretty town, but even prettier is the mountain pasture world above it. Highly recommended!

When leaving, I called my friend Melanie, who has a weekend house there to tell her that I had stopped in Lofer - and it turned out, she was busy working there that day, but then I had already left and did not turn around. Where am I rushing to?

Not long thereafter, I got to the village of Waidring, which is already in Tyrol. It is at the one end of the valley of Pillersee. I knew this town earlier, as it is an intersection towards St. Ulrich, where I had skied with my friends a couple of years back - the very same friend I was to visit in Ireland. In all, a wonderful area - and the village itself boasts a number of traditional Tyrolean houses.

The weather definitely was getting better, later in the afternoon the sun showed itself. I kept riding west, passing through pretty towns of Tyrol such as St. Johann, Ellmau, Scheffau and Wörgl.

In Wörgl, I went to a "Mäki", a McDonald's for dinner and rode for another hour, till around 8:30 pm. There I located a place to stay, called Toni's Seeblick Camping. As it was quite late, it took me quite a while to find a caretaker, but once found, I was offered a pretty place to pitch my tent for the first night. At €20, it was a slightly above what I expected, but then I was really impressed by the private cabins of the bathroom - you had a toilet, a shower and plenty of space behind each door. A far cry from the co-educated bathrooms of the French campgrounds - but that is music for the future.

On this day, I had ridden 123 kilometers - was actually quite happy, given that I had started in the wee hours of the day. I had a good night`s sleep.