All Good Things Have to Come to an End: Day 64 - Bad Hof Gastein to Salzburg
And what an end. Each day of this CAAR route has been different, bar one common factor. They have all been spectacular in their own unique way.
Today we knew we had about 100 km to ride to get to Salzburg. We would have about 400 m of net downhill, and we thought it would be mostly slight downhill cruising along the rivers, probably about 4 1/2 hours of cycle time.
We didn't push ourselves to get a fast start as a result of our pre-ride thoughts and calculations, leaving Bad Hof Gastein just past 10. We arrived in Salzburg just as the sun was setting!!
This wasn't because we were riding slow, or the route was difficult. It was because we were continuously stopping to marvel at the views, take pictures, and to simply soak in the day. This was particularly true for the first 30 km as we left the Gastein valley. The bike route was mostly on paved farm roads that ran along the high plateau well above the valley bottom where the highway and trains were. Our riding company were cows and the odd farmer on a tractor. It was straight out of Sound of Music ....
I'll let the pictures do most of the talking. Suffice to say, the last 5 days have been the highlight of our trip so far. The Ciclovia Alpe Adria Radweg (CAAR) has been simply spectacular.
We're taking a day off tomorrow in Salzburg for a little R&R and to make a plan for the last week(s) of our trip. The weather's been getting crisper, we've seen most of what we wanted to so we've been mulling over flying home a week earlier than planned. Decision time tomorrow.
I just had to take this ... German sometimes just doesn't work literally in English ... this is so bad (on so many levels) it's funny ... I know that English words are /can be hilarious to other cultures too ...
Here's a close up a few km's later ... Hohenwerfen Castle ... it looks like it dominates the area ... but it was dwarfed by the mountains on either side ... still pretty cool
After Bischoffen we were into more mixed farming (not just cows) and there were quite a few roadside stands selling their wares ... this time is was all forms of squash (not just pumpkins (Kurbis in German))
we had about 10 km of road riding through this very narrow canyon when we were about 30 km out of Salzburg. This is the only picture I got, just as we were heading in. It was pretty dramatic, but to add to the drama, we had a strong headwind, it was spitting rain, and there was no shoulder and some traffic ... no time to stop and take pics!
