The room at the Posthotel was really lovely. Sadly, it was on the front which faced the narrow, busy main street through Donauworth, so it was a very noisy room until the traffic died down later into the evening. Breakfast was in the price, and the Posthotel breakfast was as good as any other. We didn’t seem to sleep well, and both of us felt rather lazy this morning, so we just didn’t rush. It was 9:30am when we rolled away from our otherwise lovely Hotel for Ingolstadt, some 60k east along the Danube River.
It was cool, but the sky was a clear, cloudless blue. We knew it would get hot by midday. In fact, it reached 22 degrees by lunchtime! The Danube looked lovely as we headed east on the northern bank. It was flowing quite fast, but the river at Donauworth has not developed the proportions that we will see a few hundred kilometers further down river.
The countryside was almost entirely a picture today for the entire ride. As we cycled away from Donauworth, we passed through beautiful ploughed fields, with villages visible in the distant mist. The path was clean bitumen, making it a dream on which to ride.
However, we didn’t get far before the path became very undulating, the long climbs really testing our tired legs. We would crest then plummet for a kilometre or two, then suffer up long steep inclines all over again. Fortunately, this leveled out after some twenty kilometres, with most of the rest of the day relatively flat with a gentle wind assistance fanning our backs.
The path was generally well marked, but was not without numerous frustrating occasions when we just did not know where to go next. We found others in the same predicament. Early morning we came across a group of four elderly Germans out for some bike touring. They were lost. They told us they were from ‘local area’. He had a detailed topographical map and a hand held GPS – and he was still lost! We at least helped them with direction – they were going from where we had come.
Despite some of the tracking frustrations, there was no lack of beautiful sights along the way, especially through the many forested sections with their carpets of lovely yellow leaves laid out to welcome us.
We followed the Danube for some brief sections only. Otherwise, we hardly saw the Danube most of the day after leaving Donauworth. The Danube sections were beautiful scenery of the water, but the track surface was gravel at best, and at times barely single track gravel to try to keep the bikes on the very narrow tracks.
The most glorious of all were the many beautiful villages, all surrounded by vast open fields, many freshly ploughed while others were being harvested of their corn (maize). For many kilometres we were actually following excellent road right through the middle of the farmer’s large fields. We could see the faces of the farmer, and in one case his young daughter, steering the very large harvesting machinery in their straight lines up and down the very flat fields with lovely deep brown soil.
The gem of the day was the village of Neuburg. We came through the outer suburbia, counting down the kilometres. We planned lunch for Neuburg, but were taken by complete surprise by the massive ‘burg’ right over the magnificent bridge that spans the Danube River at this point. This ‘Burg’ was so large, there was no way we could capture it all in either of our cameras. We sat in the cobbled, village square, eating our fresh baguettes with the full splendour of the ‘Burg’ towering over us.
We were now twenty kilometres short of Ingolstadt. We set off for the final leg, with the most magnificent breeze to our backs. It was glorious cycling. We stayed on the cycle path that follows the road, with open fields to our right most of the way. I think we covered the final twenty kilometers in an hour, which meant we enjoyed the journey immensely.
Ingolstadt is massive. It swallowed us up. Being Saturday, the Information Centre was closed. We were very disoriented in any case. We had a fair idea of where the camping ground was, but getting there seemed an impossibility without help. We found our way to the Danube, crossed it and cycled the Danube path trusting for some kind of divine direction. Everyone we asked had no idea that a camping ground existed, but we cycled ahead in faith.
A cyclist finally passed us on the path, and I called out to him “Campingplatz?” He said “Yes, one kilometer. Straight down” in broken English. We couldn’t believe it. Sure enough, there was the sign, and another, and finally we were rolling into the Auwaldsee Camping Ground. It has its own lakes, hundreds of caravans which are obviously permanent, and a nice area for our one lonely tent. This is the first time in a week that the tent had been up. Once set up, it is cozy and warm. To some extent, we prefer the tent to the hotel rooms, except we miss the power for charging our various electronic gadgets.
Today passing through one of the first villages this morning, my eye was captured by this very large rock in the village square, through which a fountain was bubbling up through and out over the top. I couldn’t tell whether this was a natural fountain or whether man had something to do with its design. It certainly looked every bit natural. The water in these public fountains is usually clean and drinkable. This one was unique though, bubbling up through a very large sandstone rock.
It caused me to reflect on the words of Jesus in John, chapter 4, when He had a lengthy conversation with a Samaritan woman at a village well. Jesus said to her “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life”.
The water bubbling through the rock in the village square may quench your thirst for a period, but will do nothing to quench the thirst for the things that lead to eternal life. We need the spring of water welling up to eternal life!
From the edge of the Danube we send our love. Kelvin & Julie
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