Still exceeding

We found a lovely Aschach lunch place by the water (see photo).

Things were going rather splendidly and were definitely on track in terms of timing when we decided to take “the Eferding detour”. While it was a group decision, stories during and after the adventure (which added and extra 15 kilometres to our planned day) vary somewhat as to who decided what and when.

So, a right turn was taken from the main path. It was beautiful farming country with old farmhouses, farm folk picking strawberries and “spargel” (an in-season particularly delicious white asparagus) and we were all were savoring our first away-from-the Danube experience. We passed through villages (Aham and Inn) and then what can only be described as ‘group-think’ started when we commenced following pink arrows on the road intermittently woven with our green R17 and R18 signs.

We certainly didn’t find Eferding where it should have been, and it’s fair to say, that there was a stage we were just making bad decision on top of bad decision, based on the wrong assumption when we made our first turn off the path. At some point, when we were on a dirt track (most unusual as the path had been generally sealed) and crossing a train line that wasn’t on the map, Bas went back to scout basics and concluded that from the position of the sun on its early ‘downward’ trajectory we where heading west. Eferding should have been in the south.

So what did we do? We saw a busy road signposted to Linz (our planned daily destination) and started cycling. It was a really busy holiday-filled road with fast cars. At one point my front basket came loose, launching some papers on to the road which necessitated one of our team dashing on to the busy road for a rescue. At this point a lovely, concerned, gesticulating Austrian granny-type person emerged from her home and said something which I think translated along the lines of “you cyclists have the whole Danube and its path, you should be using it and not cycling on this very busy road- get back down there onto the path”. Indeed she was pointing into the distance and indeed we could see bicycle helmets moving through sweet corn fields. So there we headed and re-joined the main path.

What had we done to get into our little predicament? Well, we’d certainly taken a detour to Eferding but we’d taken it at the point where it re-joined the Danube path having all missed the signage to the correct turn earlier after lunch on the main path. We were going backwards!