Taking Our Chances and Reaping the Rewards

 Brennbickl to Innsbruck

Stams Abbey, a 13th Century Cistercian Monastery established in 1273 

Here is the map for today’s ride. Again we are following a river system, initially riding alongside the Bad Inn River before it flows into the Inn River valley which takes us into Innsbruck.

The elevation profile is rather a treat. Most rivers on Earth I believe flow downhill and as we’re following the waters that’s what we’re doing too and dropped 120 metres of elevation overall. Not as thrilling as yesterday but still very nice. We’ve almost put the day before behind us. 😉

It wasn’t all beer and skittles though: there were some very sharp little ramps in the first ten kilometres that got the heart pumping and the legs screaming. They were mostly places where we either crossed the railway line by diving down into a short tunnel and then had to power up the other side after doing a sharp turn; or where we came onto a bridge crossing the river. Generally the latter was much easier.

For those of you who aren’t cyclists, the main difference is that when you have to do an sharp turn - in this case either 90 or 180 degrees - you lose all your momentum and have to push very hard on the pedals to overcome the sudden hill you are faced with. I’d say 90% of our climbing came in the first third of the ride, which made the rest of the journey into a nice fast spin.

The first notable event of the day was after only a few kilometres to have the delight of being sandwiched between the river going in our direction and a relatively long train going towards the railway station that services Brennbichl and the surrounding area.

We stopped a few times early to take photos and for Di to add a neck gaiter to what she was wearing, as it was a little cooler than we thought it would be.

Thie bridge below (no, NOT the “below bridge”!) looked brand new but in fact they’d updated an older bridge with resurfaced approaches and new wood paneling along the sides. The surface on the bridge itself was timber slats, which must have been done relatively recently because it was in pristine condition: very little fading of the timber and all the slabs still very tightly aligned. I’ve got a couple of stories about crossing wooden bridges that weren’t in such good condition but don’t want to get sidetracked just when I’m building up a bit of momentum!

I think something caught Di’s eye a little way after that bridge and she stopped for a photograph. I said that I might was well get our obligatory Team Photo after she’d taken her picture …

I’m not sure what these bundles of short logs are for …

 … but I suspect it might be something like we saw in the Southern Alps in France where the commune provides wood caches for residents to collect their year’s supply of firewood. 

By the way, if you have a look at Di you will notice that she’s wearing long sleeves, although she started in short sleeves as you can see in both of the photos above. She actually has her rain jacket on as it had started about 5 kilometres into the ride. The great thing is that we only had the jackets on for about 5 kilometres and then it was suddenly dry and too warm for us to want to wear them.

It’s funny: I thought it being such a grey day with the mountains much obscured by cloud there would not be a lot of photography happening. In the end I think it was a day where I took proportionately more photos per kilometre than quite a few other days on this trip. Perhaps it was because the riding was generally easy and the temperatures were quite good. 

Here’s a view of Bad Inn River about 15 kilometres into our journey, which is further below us than it looks in the photo …

If you refer back to the elevation profile you’ll see quite a lumpy bump at around that distance from the start. We are above the river here and have another bit still to climb before we get to enjoy the descent down the other side - even more enjoyable knowing we have no more real hills to overcome for the day.

After we’d descended that hill and were riding on fairly flat ground beside the railway line I saw a church perched on top of a hill. The view was a bit obscured by the railway grade so I scrambled up the bank to get a clearer view. I’m really glad I did …

Here’s today’s obligatory manure pile dump photo. The good thing about it is that you can clearly see the benefit of this sort of agriculture behind: the maize is growing like mad …

Sadly, I think photos of manure piles will be few and far between for our last three days of riding. This is the only one I spotted today and I suspect they won’t be much in evidence in the more “civilized”, flatter landscape we’ll be riding through. I say “sadly” because I will miss seeing clear evidence of farming being carried out in such a sustainable, traditional and environmentally friendly way. Then again, I might be wrong about that and you’ll see more piles of cow shit over the next three days of riding. I hope so!

You’ve seen the Stams Abbey as the introductory image but I’ll show it to you again for chronological correctness - and of course because it really is a beautiful building …

… and, as often is the case with some of these grand historic buildings you can visit, listen to Cistercian hymn singing, stay and participate in various workshops.

As we turned away from the arresting view of the monastery we saw this extensive market garden. Look closely and you’ll see a bunch of workers just right of centre. I reckon the planting of these young vegetable plants - which I think are lettuces - is done using machines but whatever this team was up to it was all manual labour. 

Here’s quite a nice view of a cirque that both of us wanted to take a picture of …

I thought the church in the foreground set off the rest of the scene very nicely.

Here are a couple views of a small chapel right beside the bike path. This one taken on the approach …

 … and this one looking back …

I’m deliberately not including a lot of videos in today’s post for two reasons: I’ve observed that they aren’t getting a lot of views so most folks don’t seem to want to take the time to watch them and also because I’ve put together what I think is quite a nice compendium of our day on the bike and I don’t want anyone who does decide to watch it to feel they’ve “seen it all before”. 

However, I thought this video did deserve to be included because it’s a bit different than anything I’ve put into a post so far. It’s a lovely pastoral scene that the bike path passes through …

We’re well into our ride by now. I’d highlighted a place along the way I thought we might get a coffee and snack but it turned out to be a traditional gausthaus and wouldn’t be open until a bit before midday.

The only other two places along the route that I’d identified as somewhere we could get something were two supermarkets side by side in a seemingly industrial area fifteen kilometres from the finish. I

t turned out that one of them had a cafe inside and we enjoyed a short but very pleasant break …

I’ve got two photos now of an impressive crag that dominates the landscape on our approach to Innsbruck. The first was taken at perhaps ten kilometres away …

… and this one taken at perhaps half that distance away …

As we got closer to Innsbruck the river had gotten significantly wider and, interestingly, significantly colder to ride next to. It was a sudden rather than a gradually thing and when it happened we both concluded that this must have been where the Bad Inn joined the Inn River and the significantly coder air was being carried along by the Inn River. Here’s a photo showing how wide the river had gotten to by the time we were within a few kilometres of Innsbruck …

The river here is wider, deeper and a lot quieter as it moves along flatter ground.

We had been increasing our pace bit by bit over the last 15 kilometres because we notice that the sky was inexorably getting darker and darker and we thought we could be getting rained on quite soon. As it turned out we arrived - after the road took us up a nasty gradient about three hundred metres long (which you can see on the elevation profile if you look closely) - at our accommodation just, and I mean JUST, before the skies opened. We hurried inside, got changed quickly and set out for a nearby bar/bakery just about 160 metres further up the hill. I took a nice little video of the rain coming down and Di unfurling an umbrella   to keep herself dry in the porch of the hotel before emerging into the deluge. I took a nice little video of that, but you’ll have to look at my compendium entitled “Cheating the Rain Between Brennbichl and Innsbruck” if you want to see it …