21 August 2006

Austria & The Alps Day 10 - North by Northwest?

Well. As is now the norm we set off in waterproofs. Waterproof over trousers and Hood Kevlar lined jeans do not make for happy motoring pleasure. Betty Swollocks within minutes. At least on the positive side Doris has got over last week's problem of losing the sats every ten minutes. And so she led up from Switzerland into Germany. Swiss petrol was reputed to be cheap, but the fill up I did just before the border was 118 cents a litre. So about 55p a litre. No wonder there are so many American cars about with Swiss plates.

Once in Germany we hit the motorways. Getting to St Goar was more important than scenic touring!

One small detour was forced on us when I chose the wrong Rüdesheim from the two options that Doris had in her city finder. I had a 50-50 chance and chose wrong. In mitigation I have to say that both were about the same miles from where I created the via point AND are the only two in the entire Atlantic base maps and 16 miles apart!

As a result we added 20 miles to the days mileage and had come up the wrong side of the river so I aborted Rüdesheim and came straight to St Goar. We had lunch and then booked in the YH.

Once unpacked and showered we walked back to town for a look-see and an ice cream. We watched the ferry going back and forth to St Goarhausen and decided to have a boat trip and for €2.60 each return it was a good trip! Today's mileage was 260, and we'll have the same sort of day on Wednesday so tomorrow will be a no bike day to give our arses a rest. We plan to be plain tourists and take the riverboat trip to Rüdesheim and back. It takes 3 hours to get there southbound but only 1 hour and 40 minutes to come back. 

Any guesses? Tide!

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