Deggendorf

Monday September 19
In Which we Dodge the Drizzle into Deggendorf

I awoke to the sound of steady rain falling outside our hotel room. A glance out the window gave the type of scene that is dreaded by all long distance cyclists - soaked streets and a sea of umbrellas. Although we know that it is unrealistic to expect to ride 2000 km across Europe without getting wet, I do tend to inhabit a fantasy world where the impossible is often highly likely.

I decided to re read the weather forecasts. No joy there. The easiest approach was to do nothing for a couple of hours and see what happened. If the weather improved we would leave immediately, if it got worse we would have another coffee and wait even longer.

While we were waiting for the weather to change it gave me a chance to go down to the basement garage to examine the scene of a serious car accident

While we were sitting in the foyer yesterday the concierge left his desk in a state of agitation. When I asked what was the matter he replied that an accident had occurred in the basement. When we followed him downstairs we were amazed to see that a new BMW SUV had driven straight into one of the concrete supports at a quite high speed. The car was demolished and the occupants had been transported to hospital. It was hard to understand what had happened, although I suspected that it was another case of the "mixed accelerator with brake pedal" syndrome.

When I re examined the scene the following day I could see that a parallel set of skid marks led across the car park, directly to the concrete post. It appeared that the driver had accidentally floored the accelerator and spun the wheels as he headed for disaster. The car's back seat had been piled high with luggage, so I felt sorry for the holiday makers who had had their plans so greatly altered by this event. The post showed very little outward evidence of the accident, showing just how unequal the conflict had been.

By 10.30 am the rain had stopped and I tried to round up the riders to make use of whatever respite we had. The difficulty was that most had either switched off their phones or were too deaf to hear them ringing

We proceeded to search the hotel and town for the missing people and, about 30 mins later, we were finally ready to head off.

Today's ride was relatively short and mostly on lovely smooth bitumen paths. This meant that we could cruise along happily at quite a good speed. At the town of Bogen we found a beautiful bakery to stock up with supplies for a picnic lunch further down the road. Somehow, although there was rain all around us, we managed to ride in a patch of fine weather. Quite often it works the other way round, where a little rain cloud can follow you all day, even when the rest of the district is in bright sunshine. Fortunately on this day, fate was in our favour and we were able to complete the entire ride without a single drop of rain.

We arrived at Deggendorf around 2.30 pm and decided to have a hot drink before heading to the hotel. When we did finally arrive at the hotel we were met by a confused crush of people at the counter, all jostling for keys at the same time. The hotel staff seemed to just give up and hand out keys to anyone who asked for one (even when they were not part of our group). This meant that, by the time David and Carol reached the desk, they were told that "all the rooms had been allocated". Obviously they were not happy, nor were they happy when they were offered a single room with an additional fold up bed.

They eventually had to wait quite a while, until a room was vacated by a late checker outer.

Maggie and I were also not impressed when we were sent to a room without windows. Well technically it did have a window, but it looked straight into the beer garden, meaning that both the window and curtains had to be continually closed. Paul and Jan were sent to a room in the crawl space in the ceiling. The only window they had was a small round porthole at floor level. The only way to look out was to lie flat on your stomach and crawl to the edge.

The hotel's restaurant also had no idea what a vegetarian was. We tried to explain that vegetarians do NOT eat meat soup, but the sour faced waitress insisted that it was very rude and ignorant not to eat the soup that was provided. No choices were offered, just an evil glare and some muttered abuse. Hardly world's best practise in the hospitality industry. This battle of wits lasted through the whole meal with just about all of us managing to incur her displeasure for some misdemeanour or other. She didn't even approve of the way we had stacked our empty plates. We were glad to leave the stifling and noisy interior and get some quietness and fresh air outside.

Tomorrow marks the end of section two of our Odyssey ride as we reach the famous 3 rivers city of Passau. Three riders will be leaving us and other 5 riders will be joining for section 3.Read more