First Tour - Mission Accomplished

This first Bike tour came to an end yesterday. The last day presented itself with an opportunity to go the longest distance in one day. This was done with the relief of knowing that once we arrived we could have some proper rest.

The body got through from day to day with little rest, but now that it is over the body can really feel the distance which it carried that heavy bike around.

In total it was 11 days, a 30kg bike, 505km forward, 4,646m up and an average spending €6.60 per day.

After being lucky enough to rest in a strangers car for a night (Thank you again Roland). We departed from Trieben once again but heading South as opposed to West. Destination Judenburg. It was only on that Tuesday morning when we realised we had one bitch of a climb. 10km of climbing with real flats in between. Climbing the Alps. The Trieben pass. 552m of lugging that 30kg Willow (my bikes name) up the frikkin Alps in the rain.

Trieben pass climb

It was not easy but we made it. I was particularly proud of Nadja. She was dreading the climbs many weeks before we ever started the tour, and yet there she was, climbing up the Alps with me with in rain.

Top of the climb

After this intense introduction for the day, we decided to have our first ever break inside a restaurant in order to escape from the cold rain for some time to rest and recover. We found ourselves greeted by Slovakian people and this one woman in the restaurant did her best to "mother us". I must say, it was very well received. She put our wet clothes in the dryer, she gave us warm slippers and a blanket and ensured we were comfy and warm as we dined in the restaurant.

Thank you Slovakian lady who's name we never got

Amusingly enough, the uphill was the easy part of that cycling day. The downhill proved to be much more tiring. Cold water shooting in through the ventilation holes of my shoes. Cold, wet wind blowing directly at us. Wet, cold, numb fingers pressing against the brakes for the next 10km. It was a tough day but once again we were greeting an amazing family in Judenburg. Lena and Michael and their two children. What a wonderful family. Even though the children didn't know english I found myself playing with them for some time. The highlight of that evening was when we had a live concert performed by our musical duo hosts. Lena has written many songs and she sang some for us while Michael accompanied her on the guitar. What an amazing evening to end such a tough day.

Thank you Lena and Michael

Our last night was spent back to Leoben where we were once again hosted by Hannah. Thank you SO SO SO SO much Hannah for accepting to take us in again in short notice. Leoben really did end up like our second home during that trip as it provided us with much needed last minute shelter and rest.

Leoben round 2

The last day home was pretty easy considering everything. Thanks to the downhill we maintained a higher average speed than most of the other days. Having said that, we had a total of 662m of climbing on that trip. And every meter of climbing really made itself felt with the accumulation of all the previous days. We made it home. We survived the good and the bad.

Let's eat!

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It's now time to rest and prepare for the long adventure which will hopefully take us to Spain and further.