More from my Danube cycling trip

[Ken Rennie]

I am still struggling with my church interior and exterior shots as they are huge and I am trying to correct leaning verticals but thought that you might like to see the Austrian countryside. I carried my A7R4 with 24-105 lens on the handlebar bag. On the first day I also had the 16-35 but left it behind on the boat after this.

Soft light was what we had throughout the trip

Lots of castles

One occasion with good light, this is a phone shot from our boat as the paddle steamer passed

This is the Wachau an area of pretty villages, vineyards, orchards and castles

Corpus Christi celebrations with the town band and traditional costumes

This castle is now the town hall, it is out of proportion for the tiny village

Melk Abbey, this is a monastry to this day. There are many working monastries and convents in Austria. This was one of the few occasions where I scouted out this shot by cycling several miles upstream until I found a barrage across the river to give me this view.

The Abbey is very impressive and speaks of the power and wealth that the church held.

Evening sunshine, a treat.

This was our last cycling day and we struck out away from the river to see some countryside.
This is Clam Castle

Back onto the river

When we got back on the boat, this was our last evening. We had a briefing when we were told that we may not be able to get back up to Passau but if not then we would be busswd back. The river waa rising rapidly and the boat may not get under some bridges. In the end we made it but by the next day all boat traffic was halted as tge river rose 30ft, flooded cities, towns, villages and roads. What had been annoying rain for us had been torrential rain and a thaw in the mountains, snow melt and water run off causing rapid river rise. We left Passau on Saturday lunchtime, by Sunday it was cut off. Ken

 

[AlanLichty]

Wow - this has been quite the adventure Ken. Thanks for bringing us along to see parts of Europe I have never seen in person. The sights along the river are gorgeous.

 

[JimFox]

What an awesome travelogue!

I am a day late reading this, but I totally enjoyed it Ken. I appreciated being taken along with you.

A couple of things jumped out at me. Corpus Christi is a town in Texas, I didn't know there was a town by the same name in Austria. Though I am not totally surprised as so many of our town names here in the US came from town names in Europe.

And wow... so many castles. I was under the impression of castles being more spread out like they are in the UK. Here, it seems there is another castle every few miles?

I am glad to hear you made it back on the boat. I was also surprised for the reason, the water level making it so you couldn't get under the bridges. Here, the Mississippi is the only real river that might rival that in terms of boats and cruises on a river. But it's major problem for years now hasn't been the river being so high the boats cant clear under the bridges, but that it's too low and the boats are getting stuck on the river bottom because it's too shallow.

Well done!