Cycling the Danube Part 2

Two years ago we took it into our heads to cycle along the Danube from Vienna via Bratislava to Budapest (see here). We so enjoyed this that we resolved to cycle the upper stretch: from Passau (Germany) to Vienna.

We started in Vienna, took a train to Passau where the Danube meets the Inn and Ilz and becomes a grown-up river, collected some bikes and followed the river downhill to Vienna. Our luggage magically overtook us each day and was waiting in our appointed hotel for our arrival.

The going was very flat which is one advantage of following a river and we passed through some wonderful scenery and charming Austrian villages which one would normally by-pass or ignore. We checked out cafes, ice cream parlours and some out-of-the-way churches some of which had suffered from the Baroque tendencies of the Counter-Reformation. We even visit the former Mauthausen work camp but that is an experience that one retains in one's own heart and mind.

Arriving in Vienna we had time to spend with friends and to visit some of the sights - it was too hot for the Hofburg or Schonbrunn Palaces - and then took an overnight train to Venice.

Why Venice when we went there last year? We needed a more restful holiday and we were in search of the atelier of William Henry Tyler, late Victorian sculptor who wrote letters from an address close to San Marco. Well, it was as good an excuse as any to go to Venice, as if one needed one.

It was hot - Italian hot - and the city was very full but we were visitors not tourists and so we ignored the other people and enjoyed ourselves in a city which is a never-ending series of serene aesthetic surprises.

The picture story is here  or, if you can use flash, here

A perfect day

Apart from being the day after the Lions thrashed Australia, and the day on which Andy Murray finally won Wimbledon ... today was special for other reasons.

All it lacked was the friends who have made this place special for us: Rendels, Goldmen, the Anglo-Dutch, jolly Googlers and of course all our family some of whom are not far off an age to start fishing. And, for the record: six pollock (J3, K2, P1 but it was enormous).

There are some more photos here.

When your son rings up from London
Says he thinks the tides look right
And the weather forecast's looking rather good.

And he jumps upon a train
Travels down, he's Truro bound
And you spend the evening eating out of doors.

Then you up and drive to Cudden,
Piskies beach and fishing rock,
And six pollock give their lives from turquoise sea;

Oh the fresh air and the fishing
They can banish what is waiting:
All those pressures that you had stacked up on Friday last.

You're soon absorbed in tussles
(Catching fish needs guile and muscles)
And the thoughts that scampered round your tortured brain
Will soon be passing through the ether
Lost forever from your mind, like a
Chinese lantern fading out on darkest night.

When the sun is still bright shining
As you round grey Helston town
And the evening looks like lasting until spring.

Then you simply cannot ask me
Why we live where e'er we do.
I can't explain to friends who're up the line.

But I thank our lucky stars
That we can do this when we will
For tomorrow's now a much, much brighter day.

Postscript: the day was helped by eating fresh crab sandwiches on the beach at lunchtime and a seafood platter of simply-cooked scallops, mussels and fresh pollock fillets for supper.

Postscript to this: while we do not usual bow to informal comments we are very happy to confirm that no day could be truly perfect without all our family around us, including the very youngest. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to clarify this.