Obviously, the Alps are not exactly on the shortest route from Franconia to Spain, but neither is it a huge detour. Maybe it adds 10 extra travelling days to maybe 140 days in total. On the other hand it is both a nice adventure and a nice story. I mean, how many people do you know, who crossed the Alps on a fully loaded travelling kickbike? See? I know exactly one, and he sits in front of my computer. 😉
My route went south in Germany to the Nuremberg area and Regensburg. In these areas I visited nine different house holds of friends and family – quite a lot for such a short distance. The route went on through Landshut towards Rosenheim, which I passed on tour day 66, the 8th of October 2022.
Thirty kilometers before Rosenheim I reached the river Inn. Once you reached the Inn, it is super easy, to follow the gravel road along its shore for the next 200 kilometers. I had one and a half days of foggy weather that made it impossible to see the Alps in the distance. This was one of my first impressions of the Inn-Cycleway on the evening.The Alps suddenly came out of the foggy wheather, when I was quite close and they were all the more mighty as a sight then. I always admire these mountains that suddenly spring up like a three dimensional wall in the otherwise flat land*. (Quick reference: * = not to be confused with flatland. However, the Alps might be equally unimaginably in their additional height dimension for beings of such flat lands as Northern Germany. 😉 )In general I leave panoramas in higher resolution here in the blog. So if you click on it, you may look at them in much bigger sizes. For most other pictures I just use 2000 pixels as the widest edge, for panoramas I use 3000, 4000 or 5000 – just that you can enjoy them closer.I like the winding path and the jogger just came in the right moment to emphasize it a bit. Of the twenty pictures taken, also with a passing cyclist, this here had the best perspective with another person. It is always a bit more difficult if other people just do what they do and move and you want to have the best shot. 😉Kind of the same as the last one, but taken many miles apart. Horse riders are always cool in pictures. Talking about animals, I found this sheep race intriguingly funny.Going from one funny face to the next. It happened that when I crossed this place that it was Sunday in October and that THE parachuting club of Tyrol had one of their three yearly jumping days and festivities beside my path. I went over for some pictures, some cake, a chat and even got a parachuting stamp in my pilgrim stamp booklet. If this vertical panorama is not shown in size width, if you click on it it should be in full size anyway. Some of the towns maybe 50km into the Inn valley in Austria.I visited a small chapel here and discovered that the passage provided a nice light situation. I also had a chat with some people there about the kickbiking and my journey. On average I have two such conversations every day. 🙂 Some people are just in awe, some might get inspired – the first one is funny to watch, the second is a thing I really like to do.Gosh, what a massive panorama this was. It took probably 20 pictures. Often I just take one or two pictures in churches, but here a really wide and high panorama was nice to represent the church decently.Outside of a Karmelite church, which is now a museum, these nicely colored plants forced me to take an autumn picture.A particularly nice camping site here. Right into the slope of some tiny forest bit.The camp on the last picture was on the right edge of this shot. Roughly behind the odd darker spot there that looks like a snake that has eaten a small elephant. I found it really difficult to find good sleeping spots in the Inn valley! Mainly because this is the main truck route from Italy to Germany and the highway is always in hearing distance. The only question is how terribly close it should be this night. At this spot I already did not care anymore that it was quite loud, because I got used to from the three nights before. Ignorance is bliss and I was then happy to enjoy the scenery, sand and water.Another camping ground directly beside the Inn. Very nicely looking location – within highway hearing distance of course.
By the way, during the day one has to travel at least a third of the route relative close to the highway. Not one of my favorite things to do. If you are looking for a nice and relaxing and calm holiday cycling route, I would NOT recommend going through the Inn valley. 🙂
I had a food break at the start of Schwaz and happened to go through a leaflet at an infoboard „who fixes what in Schwaz“ and found there is a bike shop called „Zur rostigen Gurke“ „To the rusty cucumber“. In German one may call an old vehicle „Rostgurke“. I needed new brake pads anyway and thought it is ten times funnier having them from this shop than any normal one. For random coincidence it also had open: because it had a sign outside that it is closed due to illness – but an elderly man stood outside and told me that it should be open today (wherever he had this information from), so I told him that it would only be opened in 40 minutes as the opening hours said, but he said that it should be earlier. Well, I actually did not want to wait for 40 minutes just for break pads, but I thought I could wait at least for a few minutes. And, after 5 minutes the owner came and opened the shop. After he finished the elderly man’s bike, I went in and got my break pads. And I asked him also for a stamp into my pilgrim stamping booklet. So I have one of the funniest bike shop stamps now in there as well. 🙂This happens when Noah is allowed to give street names. He comes out after 40 days of flooding, calling the first one „to the ark“ (well, the „r“ is missing, but some German dialects would not pronounce it a lot, so I think it counts) and the second one „far nice“I especially liked that this sign shows a car that looks as modern as the Ford Model T. 🙂I often take pictures of graffiti. They are often funny, often good craft and sometimes absurd. I liked this one a lot.
I was thinking about doing blog posts just with graffiti of individual areas. 🙂 If you have an opinion about individual graffiti posts versus mixed into all other pictures, feel free to leave a comment.
Kind of cool. I mean, who does all the work and cut out a complicated stencil if he*she would take this serious? „My god rides a skateboard“ also reminded me of Silvia Mittermüller*, who probably has a god on a snowboard but nevertheless travels on holidays through towns on a skateboard. *a very admirable woman, that I meet every now and then since my kickbike tour to the Zugspitze. Last time I visited her in hospital, when her dislocated elbow was just operated and a day later I dropped in for her birthday to bring her a small gift. And from her mother I got a wooden spoon that I use now since three months to eat musli on my journey. I wanted to meet Silvia just quickly in the morning, but then she had the first sporty flow session since she damaged the elbow and wished absolutely no disruption, but that I could leave my present with her mum. Well, I and her mum were chatting happily away then for the next hour until Silvia appeared and I left maybe after three hours. 🙂 So much about skateboards, snowboards, Silvia and my wooden pilgrim spoon.A random, true graffiti.Sometimes I am not sure how serious graffiti are. Maybe this actually is very serious! And no, the „Chlorine“ is from a different sprayer and has hopefully nothing to do with personal favorite activities.
Feel free to add a comment if you liked some pictures especially, want to add some ideas or have any questions.
Peter's Dream of Consciousness 