June 6, 2010 - Melk to Traismauer

Estimated Mileage - 40 miles
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So, I've been riding a river trail for many days now, with very minimal hills.  I did the major climb up and over the Black Forest, and then a very small amount of climbs after that.  So, I decided to give myself a bit of a challenge and climb to the Aggsdorf Ruin, first thing in the morning.  Here's a ground level shot, looking up at where I'm heading:

This is a 300 meter ascent in 2 kilometers, with stretches of it at 20% grade.  A very difficult climb indeed.  But I Did It.  And holy crap was it worth it.  Check it out:

This was a castle built originally in the 1200's, destroyed by the Turks, then rebuilt a number of times.  Each time, it's ostensible purpose was extortion and control of the river trade, whether under the auspices of the ruling government, or under the auspices of simple pirates.  There's even a starvation pit where the pirates used to put the crews of the river barges if they didn't pay up.

The descent was also difficult.  My brakes started to smell and I had to hose them off with my water bottles to keep them cool.  It actually made the water steam!!!

The rest of the day was spent meandering through the Wachau wine region, going from town to town, from wine tasting to wine tasting, and appreciating the ancient terraces where they've been growing wine on the south-sun facing slopes for centuries:

The day ended at a Austrian guest house on the banks of a feeder canal to the Danube.  The sun was shining, the cottonwoods continued to drop their goods, the hotel proprieter slept red-faced in a deck chair for 3 hours while I stared out at the river and ate an abnormally large mutant schnitzel.  Eventually I fell into conversation with a Polish farm worker who rented the apartment across the hall from my room.  He sketched me a nice custom map of the north Polish coast (where he's from).  We chatted in our broken English/Polish/German and ended up exchanging email addresses.  His roommate, a Bulgarian, steered clear of our conversation, and the hotel owner clearly wasn't a huge fan of her Eastern European tenants mingling with the hotel guests.