Day 11 is here.
No matter how bad the weather would be today I would arrive at my parents by bike – that was the commitment I’d made to myself and pretty much the whole point of the journey.
The forecast for both Dornbirn and Innsbruck was for low temperatures (between 6 and 9 degrees) and constant heavy rain.
I left Georg’s house around 8am to ride to Dornbrin station and see if I could get a place on the train to Innsbruck. There are direct trains every 2 hours and an indirect option in between each of those. I couldn’t get booked onto the first direct train which would have left before 9 am but both the others were possible so I went for the direct option at just before 11am. I thought I’d just hang around the station café until then. Randomly the station café only opened at 9:30am and even then they were in no rush to do so.
Train arrived on time and I got my bike into one of the 5 bike spaces with 2 others already in use. They actually have reserved seats for bike travellers which I didn’t know and as I had a first class interrail ticket I trekked all the way through the train to first class.
The train journey was uneventful but occasionally left me wondering if I should have got off earlier to ride a bit further that day. It hadn’t actually rained in the morning in Dornbirn but was then quite heavy on the approach to the Arlberg with snow visible just before we entered the Arlberg tunnel. On the other side though it was rain free for quite a while (but had rained) and at one point the sun shone through. Approaching Innsbruck though it got heavy and when I got off it was both pouring down and cold. As I couldn’t have know what it would do I am happy with the decision taken.
I had pretty much all my layers on for the cycle to my parents, expecting miserable conditions. 13km and around 300m of climbing would take at most an hour and a bit of wet and cold wouldn’t be a problem for that.
It has been a very long time since I have cycled through Innsbruck. I cycled through the city centre and on to the banks of the river Inn which has an excellent cycle path along it. I’d follow that to the village of Voels from where I’d ride up the ‘Nasses Tal’ (wet valley – very apt) to Omes and then onto Birgitz. Leaving Voels the rain stopped and with the road/track going quite steep uphill I was quickly overheating. It was fun to ride some tracks that in recent years I’d run on visits back home.
I rode down the hill into my parents’ estate and was greeted by my mum who’d been tracking me from the station. I happily declined the offer of a hot bath to warm up as I was rather hot from the ride and not frozen as we’d expected I would be.
Even though I had to do this last day mostly by train being able to finish by riding up to my parents’ house made it a fine finish to an excellent adventure. It also meant I made Levi’s christening and had a bonus day at home before heading onto the French Alps on Wednesday, September 18. It also allowed for a bonus ride from my parents to my sister which is around 13km away (probably wouldn’t have done that if I completed day 12 and 13 as planned which would have involved the Silvretta Hochalpenstrasse – over 2000m above sea level).
Up until arriving at my parents, fatigue was not an issue but the day I cycled to my sister and back (with 2 hours walk in between), I felt very tired. The other notable after effect of the ride was that I seemed to have regular hunger pangs which probably went on for about 2 weeks after finishing the ride.
Physically I was really surprised how well the trip went and I’d be up for doing something like this again.
The bike returned home via DHL while I went on by train to the French Alps for a hiking holiday with Fiona before we both travelled back to Scotland by train arriving back at the end of September.
Planned Distance (days 12 and 13): 207 km
Actual Distance: 14.1 km
Trip Distance: 1437.93 km
Ascent for the day: 331 m
Ascent for the trip: 12848 m
Riding time: 1:01 hrs
Riding time for the trip: 71:27 hrs