Danube Cycle Trail 3

Short day today to Perg (42km) which is a reasonably large town but about 6km from the river.  It has a very pretty church in the centre of town (last picture).

Started off with a downpour at Linz (which followed an early morning thunderstorm). Typically, by the time I got my wet weather gear on it stopped. Not to rain for the rest of the day and it cleared a bit in the afternoon, but still got up to about 30 degrees and because of the cloud it remained humid. Its also got increasingly windy.

Not an overly exciting day on the trail  it was a bit murky early on and the area near Linz was a bit industrial with power stations, quarries and sand dredging. It certainly isn't always a pretty trail going through forest along the river, you can occasionally go through some not so pleasant areas as there is no where else for the trail to go and it's a working river. In fact there are multiple Danube trails as in many places you have the choice of riding on either side of the river and sometimes you can diverge from the river. The trail is composed of a mixture of bicycle only trails, shared paths, on road trails and small roads. But always well signed.

I didn't nearly run over anything today and the hotel room is quite good. Although I note I am in the old wing of the hotel. I turned up early at the hotel (1pm) hoping I could leave my bike there while I explored Perg. But no problem, my bag had arrived already and they were more than happy to check me in. Contrast this to the hotel in Stratford on a cycling trip when, while waiting outside the office just eating an apple, at 10 minutes to 2pm, was sternly told that check in wasn't until 2pm. Because it was so hot went to an "ice cream cafe" and had a fancy ice cream with berries. It was ok but was nearly no to so good as I nearly left my backpack behind. Lucky the owner was more alert than me.

Apart from the church, Perg also has to be known for having the worst intersection in Austria. It has two major roads intersecting each other at the main square, one of these roads splits into two, depending on which direction you want to go. In addition there are a number of streets, some one way only that come off the square. No traffic lights, no roundabout. It's give way to everyone you are supposed to and hope for the best and don't even try to go through this intersection if you don't know where you are going. Needless to.say there is a lot of tyre screeching as you launch yourself into any gaps in the traffic that open up. On driving, I was really surprised twice by Austrian drivers today. Once where the trail crosses a busy, main road someone stopped for me even though cars have right of way. In Perg itself while negotiating a narrow road a car driver pulled over and let me through.