Regensburg to Ingolstadt 110km

I've come to the conclusion that it's now near impossible for me to sleep in my body just seems to automatically wake up anywhere between five and six. I knew I had to be up early this morning to make sure I had time to part with six Euros (yes still a little bitter) to upload my blogs and photos. Perhaps I should have made this blog subscription only, judging by the amount of hits each entry gets 1p per read should cover the cost!

There were also a number of other cyclists at the camp-site who all seemed to be up and at it very early today but Tom and I settled for a much more leisurely leaving time of ten o'clock.

It was another gloriously sunny day and thankfully the weather forecast which had predicted rain and thunder proved to be widely inaccurate at least for the mornings ride.

We picked up where we left off yesterday on the Euro velo 6 route and looked forward to a day of uninterrupted riding beside the river. All was going swimmingly well, we'd eaten a hearty lunch basking in the sumptuous midday sun on the banks of the river and then set off following the river and planning at what time we too were going to dive into the clear fresh water like many other people were doing to cool ourselves off.

We then hit our first problem; we were in fact following the river in the correct direction but we were on the wrong side of the river. The path which we followed came to an abrupt halt and we faced a rather large chunk of rock which jutted out into the river blocking our way. We were lucky in the fact that we hadn't gone too far and that it was relatively easy for us to backtrack the 5 kilometres or so but all the same a little annoying and time consuming.

What with our slightly late departure time, our lazy lunch by the river and now our unfortunate misdirection we were now behind schedule. I say schedule in the loosest sense of the word. We don't really have a schedule but each day you kind of make a mental note in your mind roughly where you'd like to end up. We'd very much set our minds on reaching Ingolstadt and probably heading a little further than that but at this point that looked highly unlikely.

The hot weather, added to the car free bike path meant that for comforts sake we both decided to ditch the helmets for part of the ride. I as I've done many time before simply strapped my to one of the bungee cords on the back of my bike and thought nothing else of it. We finally managed to work our way back to the correct route which coincidentally took us past a McDonalds. It gave us the chance to fill up our water bottles and also grab a small ice-cream.....well you would wouldn't you? It was at this point that I noticed that I was no longer in possession of my helmet! Resigned to the fact that it had fallen off somewhere back along the trail and that it had served it's last duty on the trip we rode back out of the entrance of McDonalds and onto the road. It was there on a small patch of grass neatly placed next to the tree that sat my helmet, how strange, a miracle perhaps or a sign that I should never take it off while riding?

It did seem a real age for us to reach Ingolstadt and by the time we had done so we were both pretty beat. Despite our best efforts to locate a hostel or cheap hotel (almost impossible in Germany) we were forced once again to ride through the city and head for the forests on the outskirts.

The rain that had been promised began to rear it's head and things looked a little bleak by the time we finally pitched our tents off the bike trail in amongst some trees.

When I've been travelling by myself it's obviously been me who has made all the decisions and this was something I was very much looking forward to having someone else here to do it for me. However that said it's also made me somewhat stubborn I guess at times and I have to say there was some minor disagreement over where best to pitch the tents for the night. I think it was a combination of a long day on the bike and the fact that it was drizzling with rain which led to this but travelling with another person is something I also have to adapt to but like I said to Tom before heading to bed it's great to have him along for the ride.