Day 23 - Ingolstadt to Regensburg (65 miles)

Sometimes this route gives: flat and solid paths, peace and solitude, distracting scenery. Sometimes she takes away: leg punishing hills, busy roads, grim weather. Today she mostly gave, with fine weather and a mostly flat route.

The morning took me thirty-five miles via road, riverside track, wood and fields of hops and pasture to the town of Kelheim. The sun shone and the route lent itself to steady cycling: firm and flat. With one exception. There was a particularly long climb to end the morning before I dropped down into Kelheim but I had expected it; it was a very obvious spike on an otherwise flat profile. But the previous three hours had been easy on the body, my mind was prepared and the path itself was mostly through shaded woodland; to call it a pleasure to ride would be overstating it dramatically but I tackled it with a positive attitude.

At Kelheim I sat in the main square and relaxed with a milkshake and some unusual coffee with whipped cream and pistachios before tackling the twenty-seven miles or so to Regensburg, a city with a medieval centre that had been declared a World Heritage Site. My plan was to get there in good time to wander around before heading on to my out of town hotel. It was a beautiful ride, almost entirely along the Danube curving gracefully through its wood covered valley, the occasional grey cliff taking me back to a much younger river upstream three days ago. I was also reminded that this is a working river with the periodic appearance of a massive barge churning its way up river as I cycled down.

I arrived at Regensburg mid afternoon, plenty of time to wander its maze of streets, some wide and overtaken by the trappings of tourism and some narrow and silent. But they were all colourful and they all oozed age. I worked my way randomly through the medieval centre pushing my bike while admiring the simple and the extravagant, the small and the large. I had been tempted to park it up but the many bike racks around the city - and the lampposts and street corners - were so overloaded with bicycles it was like an infestation. By the time I reached the Domplatz to see the twin towered Gothic cathedral - sadly largely under cover as there seems to be a fair bit of renovation taking place - it was time to head east again.

Within half an hour I was at my motel accommodation just outside the city, a soulless box of a building but perfectly situated right on the route and not at an exploitative tourist price like those in the heart of Regensburg a few miles back. I finished the day at a nearby Italian restaurant a few minutes away on foot, walking past a supermarket where young and old were loading their bicycles with shopping; unlike home it seems here the bicycle has as much a role in the daily routine as a car. 

Tomorrow I have a full day again but it will put me only a short ride away from Passau on the Austrian border and my next rest day.