A Fan-tastic Finale to our Flashpacking Fandango!

 Grassau to Salzburg

We began another day with the forecast of rain being quite likely throughout the day, but especially around midday. Both of us decided that it would be a good idea to store our rain jackets in the side pockets of our Tailfin Cargo Packs. We’ve been delighted with these bikepacking bags and even more so as the trip has progressed and we’ve got used to packing them and taking them off and putting them back on the bike.

Here’s a look at what we were looking at for our last ride of this great tour …

The ride would be about 65 kilometres long - if we didn’t stray too far from the purple line on our Garmins - through some lovely rural terrain with a coffee stop at about 25 kilometres at the town of Traunstein which has a long history. There is a striking square called the Stradplatz …

The Stradplatz in Traunstein

… which was about to hold some sort of festival featuring the local fire brigade and a mob of youth volunteers - when we arrived. Normally it would have been very pleasant to relax in this attractive square for a while BUT with the forecast rain and the sudden activity which broke out just as we’d sat down and the need to catch the train to Seekirchen to visit Pezi and pick up our bike bags when we got to Salzburg we were incentivized  to have our coffee and get moving again.

Before we left the Stadplatz I took this photo of what I have discovered is a Maibaum, translated as Maypole - which more clearly shows what the photo from a previous post was meant to do …

Our high point of the day came at about 17 kilometres into the ride and then we had some gently undulating riding to that morning coffee stop …

 We thought it would pretty much be a downhill run the rest of the way but we were surprised by a number of short steep ramps amongst our generally downhill trajectory. I wasn’t looking at a screen showing the gradient but Di regularly reported we’d just been up a section of 10% and announced at one stage (a bit indignantly I must say 😬) “That last bit was 14 percent!” We were both a bit thankful that the previous day had been so short with just a small amount of climbing. The good thing was that we often had a nice little bit of speed going down the other side.

If you look again at the elevation profile above you can see that at about the 35 kilometre point into the ride a nice long ramp down commences, and then there is another at about 45 kilometres. This bit of riding was kind of funny because just at the point where there is a short dip before the last high point in that rolling terrain, two young couples on e-bikes joined our route. Because we had a bit of momentum from the run down we sailed past them as they turned onto the road we were riding along. Of course, with the sharp uphill following immediately afterwards they powered past us. 

Couldn’t have that, could we!?!? Di and I let it all hang out in the chase but they took a bit of catching. Both RWGPS and Strava agree that I hit a top speed of 65 kms/hour in the pursuit. Three of them succumbed to our efforts fairly quickly but their front-runner was a bit harder to catch. However we both got him before our routes diverged. He didn’t quite chase back onto Di and had a bit of a laugh with us as he continued straight on after we’d turned left. A nice diversion along this quite enjoyable day of riding. 😜

Here’s a photo of what a lot of the countryside was like pretty much throughout our ride until we were closing in on Strazburg. There were a number of small towns that we passed through, sometimes following quite obscure routes from one side to another, presumably to avoid busy roads or perhaps go past some landmark or other.

Every once in a while we’d be taken by surprise by some hidden or unexpected exit, and we’d have to do a quick U-turn. Because these were small towns without a lot of traffic -especially because it was Sunday morning - generally we were able to accomplish the correction quite quickly and effectively - unlike that day leaving Piran when I unwittingly created a 2 kilometre/15 minute maze for myself by blithely sailing past a right turn I should have taken …

(I can assure you that it was a lot more complicated getting across that busy road than it looks, especially with the light making it difficult to easily see the network of bike paths, tunnels and on/off ramps than shows on this map! 🙄) I now have a ritual which I try to follow when approaching what may be a complicated transition from one road to another: “Zoom in, zoom in, ZOOM IN!” Generally it has worked well since that monumental stuff up that I’m unlikely to forget to adopt that ritual when needed, but early in the day when the caffeine hasn’t yet kicked in I have still got it wrong.

There was a real air of country charm about this day of riding through the Bavarian countryside … 

One little town we went through had a few whimsical outlines like this scattered around

Every once in a while it would seem we were remote from people in this area that actually had villages and small settlements scattered regularly along our journey …

Most of the towns had a church steeple with an elaboration ranging from one little “onion” up to maybe three. Not sure if it was a status symbol or what, but I often wondered when we passed a town with just a normal straight-sided steeple whether the population thereabouts was Protestant or what? Anyone who wants to give me a lesson on the historical religious inclinations of Bavaria is welcome to do so and I would certainly be interested in knowing more about it.

This type of arrangement was pretty much the standard set by most of the villages that had any size to them… 

Another small village with its attractive steeple

Because it hadn’t yet rained we were quite chuffed to come across a nice dry bit of well-packed gravel which added a fun bit of variation to the ride …

There was actually a few kilometres of this and I intend to put together a video that features the gravel . One fun bit was where we went past a young couple, with one of them pulling a trailer with a toddler in it. 

There was also a section of this gravel where a couple of ladies - separately - were walking their dogs. Very nice, but I am always unsettled when we pass someone who has their dog on such a long leash!

This lady had her charges well under control. Although small, the little critters were not at all yappy, which I much appreciated. 

Once in a while we saw a few cows but never any big herds …

… We did pass a number of large barns in the past few days - occasionally quite close by - which I think is how perhaps they manage commercial dairy herds hereabouts.

We paused as we went under an overpass at the Tiroler River because Di wanted a photo …

I shot a bit of footage which will appear in the video I’ll put together to sum up the days ride.

Finally we arrived at Salzburg, where Di noticed the sign and stopped to mark the occasion …

NOTE: IT IS STILL NOT YET RAINING!!! 😁

I took this photo after we crossed the river towards the centre of town and the hauptbanhof (central railway station), which is just across the road from our hotel.  

Di got caught up in a bit of traffic when we crossed the bridge so while waiting for her I took this photo of a prominent church steeple and one of the pedestrian/cyclist bridge that was framed by a tree and advertising for some sort of event …

And that’s when I put the focus on getting to our accommodation and stopped looking for things to photograph. A fair bit of concentration was now needed to navigate THE BIG CITY.  And we still had to check in, get showered, changed, fed and on the train to Seekirchen am Wallersee where Harry’s wife Pezi was waiting for us to collect our bike bags. On top of that, although the sky looks light in this direction there were dark clouds building over the city centre. And that was it for the riding. 

As mentioned earlier, I intended to get a video put together of our final day’s riding and here it is for you to look at if you so wish before reading my closing remarks:

Postscript:

A few drops fell just as we arrived at our hotel but they didn’t develop into anything. We managed to get to Seekirchen, pick up our bike bags, thank Pezi for being there for us, get on the return train and into the hotel before the thunder started rumbling and the skies opened. Whew! Another narrow escape. Dinner was had across the road at a cafe adjoining the train station and we went back to the hotel, packed up one bike and fell into bed, pretty tired but very happy to have finished our journey without any major problems. Before I fell asleep - and an excellent night’s sleep it was - I did a quick bit of arithmetic using the handy built-in calculator of the iPad. We were on the road for 28 days, made up of 23 days of riding and 5 days of resting. The grand total distance I covered was 1,445.7 kilometres. Di did a little less because she took the train for part of the day from Piran to San Giorgio di Nogaro with the rest of our group - and she didn’t make so many navigation errors as I did! 🙄

To finish the post I would like to thank Michael for putting together the first part of our tour and inviting us to ride with them. It was very bad luck that he was dealt such a debilitating illness by that nasty little insect. We missed his, Louise, Jane and Duckworth’s company for the last few days we would have ridden together before our ways parted. It was huge fun being a company of three Cliftons, two DB’s and a Duckworth. Hopefully it will not be too long before we can all ride together again.