Saturday, August 9, 2014

Day 2: Seefeld - Gries am Brenner

Woke up in the middle of the night, thinking I was awake to late. Luckily had a few hours left to rest. Woke up at 7.25 AM with the alarm and got ready, packing things here and there. Had breakfast at 8 o'clock, lots of bread and tea and set of at about 9.30. First thing we looked for was a bike repair centre, as Nico's bike had morphed to a motorbike. He had a throttle on his left handle bar as his grip wasn’t tightened enough. After (seemingly) fixing that, we carried on, steep uphill for a short while after which Nico's handle grip fell of completely. Dropped his rucksack and raced the short trip back to the bike centre. I looked at some religious stones set up in a circle until he came back. After biking through some woods and past a local (muuu), we went whizzing downhill into the Inn valley. Rather a hot day again, with blue sky. After passing the Power-Plobb (turns po in to power) we carried on along the Inn towards Innsbruck. Long strait little gravel roads with lots of bikers. We passed a racing track with an RC fuel car making a lot of noise and stopped to watch a bit. Carried on and biked through Innsbruck with it's lots of people. Had to push through the pedestrian zone as that was full. After that we used the Innsbruck bike network to get out and also saw rather a lot of bikers. The Inn valley seems to be a rather liked bike destination. Getting out of Innsbruck we paid the price for our 500 metres in altitude downhill run from Seefeld. All and more back up again. Unfortunately we had to follow the main road up. Didn't see any tracks going up the Wipp valley (name of the valley towards the Brenner pass). Whilst biking up we heard the ominous rumbling of thunder and clouds had been appearing more and more for a few hours. After Nico had replenished his dwindling water supplies we where caught in a bit of a shower but nothing noticeable. At one point I was biking in dry conditions whilst Nico being 50 metres behind me caught a bit of rain.
We had lunch at a rather snug restaurant and whilst we where eating it started raining. Rain clothes on and with a full stomach we carried on. Saw the Stubai glacier to our right but carried on up the Wipp valley. A weird up and down track followed. The left curves mostly being about 30 metres above the right curves. And it was still raining. We where overtaken or passed by still a high amount of other
biker. Arrived in Steinach am Brenner after going down into the valley where I asked at an ice cream pallor for a plastic bag to put the wet rain gear in. We biked uphill for quiet some time and didn't want to run a green house centre under our jackets. After biking under and up past the Brenner high road we reached the top after quiet some climbing and the rain had picked up again. Reaching the top we where just under the clouds and as it went downhill after that we got our long clothes on. From that point onwards we started looking for a place to stay. The first place we rung at nobody answered. The second place was a pub. Nico disappeared inside for a rather extended amount of time, me looking after the bikes outside in a downpour. It turned out the owner was very friendly and helped ring up half the town. No place free except one about one to two kilometres away from where we were standing, back the way we had come. After getting a bit lost we where greeted by the friendly owner and a warm shower and fireplace for our things to dry. After the shower we went down for some dinner and when we came back full, where greeted by a kitten at the front door which we played with for a while. After that to bed and blogger.
Track at GPSies and pictures at Picasa.

Time in saddle: 5 hours 3 min.
Distance: 65.88 km
Average speed: 13.05 km/h

No comments:

Post a Comment