"We Lost Our Spokey-Dokies in Passau"

...to the tune of 'She'll be coming round the Mountain'

Today's installment finds the plucky pair in Austria (country number 5), Linz: European city of culture 09. It's nice- we had coffee and cake for breakfast and logged on to see weather and news situation. We'll take a proper look around in a bit.

Over the last few days, we have been following the Danube cycle trail. Despite it's apparant popularity, the paths themselves have been free of crowds of bikers and very rewarding. We got into the lovely Passau to realise we'd lost a rear wheel spoke again and caused a bit of a buckle. A wheel can only take so much punishment and repair so we bit the bullet, bought a new rear wheel and have given the tandem a stern talking to. Sounds simple, but nothing's simple on (old, British) tandems: cue an enforced (though not unwelcome) rest day in Passau while European standard measurements clashed with UK standard measurements. Bob the trailer didn't fit the result so his connecting components had to be imaginatively and ingeniously altered, blah blah blah. The result is satisfactory and we're pinning our hopes on the new wheel.

Passau itself was lovely, impressively situated on the confluence of the rivers Danube, Inn and Ilz. Onwards towards Linz, the route was breathtakingly good: Bavarian landscapes gave way to more epic Austrian hillsides, no traffic and distant mountains. Our best day's pedalling yet and a very easy 83kms in very little time. Just 12kms short of Linz, bad weather and whatever the waitress had put in our morning currywürst and beer conspired to force early retirement at yet another dodgy campsite. Luke, who has famously high tolerance of shoddy facilities and inbred residents, reckons the ratio of good to dodgy camps is now about 2:1.