Leaving the Alps behind, we headed towards the Danube. When we were deciding on our route through Europe, this is the one section that I (Deb) really wanted to do. Mac wanted Verdun, France. Colburn wanted the beer route in Belgium. Lucia wanted to go to Prague. I wanted the Danube. Much like the EuroVelo 15 along the Rhine River, the Danube path (part of EuroVelo 6) has very low gradients, lots of infrastructure, and great opportunities to amuse the little ones with things other than biking. It’s perfect for a family interested in a bit longer ride. We originally had intended to bike this section of river in the spring of 2015 on our way back from Asia, but a combination of factors made it impossible at that point. We always said that we would come back and do it at some point, and this summer was our chance!
When planning our routes, we typically scour websites, guide books and tour company itineraries for ideas – both for what is interesting and what is possible. If a bunch of tour companies stop in a particular town for the night, the chances are that there is something interesting there and the infrastructure for tourists will be pretty good so we are likely to find a decent hotel or campground. They also tend to be very reasonable in what is able to be biked comfortably in a day. As we learned in our Guarda climb, sometimes the devil is in the details and the macro perspective needed to plan months of traveling can overlook key specific details. Using their knowledge makes our planning much easier, so we based our Danube route and timing on what the majority of the bike touring companies do for this section. With more than 600,000 people riding this section of the river each summer, the tour companies have plenty of experience with it.
More than five years after its inception, we were excited to finally on the Danube. Like a well-drilled army squad, we loaded the bikes, double-checked that we had enough food and water, and fell in to our typical riding order with Colburn in the lead setting the pace and doing navigation, Mac closely behind learning to modulate his strength so he can stay with the group, Lucia following him with her effortless perfect body positioning and me at the back to I can keep an eye on everyone. For most of our riding, we naturally fall in to this paceline – a single-file formation with less than a bike length between each person – because it is both easier to ride and takes up less space on the road or path.
As we rode out of Salzburg, I was admiring both our ability to function like this as a family but also in our new-found physical fitness. We were flying down the path. It felt amazing! Then it hit me. With a pit in my stomach, I realized that my desire to ride the Danube hadn’t taken in to account that the intervening years had dramatically changed our family dynamic and the past eight weeks had changed our overall fitness. We are no longer a typical family. It is the kind of thing you don’t see when you are immersed in it every day, but only when you can step back and look at it with objectivity. Lucia and Mac are no longer little kids on oversized bikes who need distractions, playgrounds and ice cream to make it through the day. As I found out when I was sick in France, they are now strong and capable adolescents experienced in the challenges of long, difficult, physical days and are even enjoying it as they learn more about what their bodies are capable of doing. In 2014 when we rode the Rhine, the kids could only ride 35-40 km per day both because of their attention span and physical ability. Four years later, we are doubling that on a regular basis and still done by early afternoon. Even the difference from just a few months ago is substantial. When we started this tour, we averaged, including stops, around 10-12 km/h. We are now able to average 22-25 km/h, depending on the terrain. This means that our 75 km day is around three hours of actual riding.
These changes, combined with our tendency to have a singular focus, led to some interesting on-trail riding dynamics. Our sister-in-law once commented, “Colburn and Deb, somewhere between a marriage and a task force!” and, I must admit, it is very true. We have, unfortunately, passed this on to our children too. For us, biking is no different – make the process as fast and efficient as possible. This became obvious to me on one particular day when Lucia, our extremely cooperative and non-competitive child, was leading the paceline.
There were a couple cyclists a few hundred meters in front of us when she picked up the pace. As our pace-setter, we simply follow her lead, so similarly sped up. As we neared the group in front of us, she geared up and quickened to a race-pace, sling-shots past them before settling back to a quick pace. “Wow, that was unusual for Lucia” I thought. A few minutes later it happened again – quickened pace to close the distance, gearing-up and race pace to pass, then slowing back to a quick pace to set the distance between. When it happened the third time, I realized that Lucia was doing this intentionally. We have now dubbed the process fishing for she casts her hook when she sees the group in front, reels them in with speed, then releases them back to go about their business without our interference once we have passed. Our non-competitive child most certainly is competitive on the path!
With most of our reservations made based on the 50-60km days that the bike tour companies suggest and not having the emotional energy to totally re-work the entire schedule, we had to adjust to a more leisurely pace of bike travel. The first few days we would make it to our destination before lunch and have a few hours to kill before we could even check in to our accommodation. In Mülheim, we went to a thermal spa and spent five hours swimming and having poolside drinks. Just outside of Linz, we stopped at a riverside pebble beach and spent a couple hours swimming and people-watching. Usually so focused on doing things and getting places, we sometimes forget to just enjoy the mundane. The slower pace changed this. Because there are only so many Baroque buildings, churches, and art one can admire before they all begin to look the same, we switched our focus to the more modern aspects of street art and food, even trying our hand at making our own (legal) graffiti in Vienna.
Once past Vienna, the bike tourist crowds thin substantially. While still a well-trod path, it is not over-run with cycle tourists making for some enjoyable days. The EuroVelo 6 continues all the way to the Black Sea in Romania but is much less developed outside of Austria. The paths are not as well marked and vary greatly in surface quality. What you get in exchange for the lower level of infrastructure is a much more genuine, friendly experience.
Almost without exception, the people we met were friendly, helpful, and seemed to be genuinely glad to see us. As we cycled our heavily laden bikes across a bridge one day, a woman walking the other way cheered us and gave each of us high-fives. While crossing a different bridge with a very narrow path for pedestrians and cyclists, each time we pulled off to the side between the girders to let the walkers pass we would receive a friendly köszönöm(thank you) for both young and old. In Mosonmagyaróvár, we saw a billboard for a small barbecue place so went there for lunch. As we stood in front of the menu, paralyzed because we could not decipher a single word on the menu but intrigued by the smells, the owner figured out that we don’t speak Hungarian or Slovak so quickly translated the menu, making us feel very welcomed and at ease. Their story of innovation and entrepreneurship is inspiring as they expand the types of food available in Hungary. If you’ve never had BBQ beef cheek, Más is definitely the place to try it! Similarly, in Komárno, our waiter/crepe chef welcomed us warmly to his city and made us feel as if we had just met up with a long-time friend.
The hospitality we received in both Slovakia and Hungary was wonderful, and a beautiful way to end of our journey. Eastern Europe is definitely a place where we would like to spend more time.
By the numbers:
- Distance cycled: a little more than 2,000 km (we didn’t keep track of everything)
- Crashes: 1 (Lucia clipped a tandem bike but no injuries)
- Flat tire/punctures/repairs needed: 1
- Countries visited: 10
- Baguettes, ham and cheese lunches eaten: too many to count!
- Major illness/injury: 1
- Bee stings: 5
- Butt blisters: 0
- Days spent sweating in >39C/100F heat: 6 (but many in the 35/90+ range!)
- Times we sang something from Sound of Music: ~ 50
- Times we said, “today was a good day” at the end: every day.
Sometimes everything goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t. We knew going into it that the weather in Ireland in May can be unsettled. It can be a fabulously beautiful time with the most spring colors across the Emerald Isle or it can be cold, wet and miserable. After our amazing good fortune for weather in Scotland, we were hesitant to believe that our luck could hold out. Fortunately for us, we were blessed with extremely good weather for the entirety of our biking trip through Ireland. It must be the luck of the Irish which smiled down upon us.
We left Glasgow on a picture perfect day – sunny but with big puffy clouds, throngs of walkers (about 40,000 of them) mostly dressed in kilts for the Kiltwalk, a charity walk to Loch Lomond, gathered on the green in front of our flat as we started our ride and a sense that spring had finally come in to full swing. The energy and pageantry of the walkers set us off on a good note. The day was not too long – about 65km (40 miles) with only one significant hill – and almost fully on bike paths. Along the way, we passed through some folks on an organized bike race, met up with other cyclists enjoying the beautiful weather, and basically sailed to our destination feeling like we could do anything. We stopped for ice cream in the early afternoon, found our way to our AirBnB without difficulty, and had an amazing and very funny dinner in town that evening. It is the kind of feeling that is hard to describe because everything simply clicked in to place as if the world was telling us that this is what we should be doing. It was an energizing and auspicious beginning.
The next few days, however, were a bit more complicated – Mac slept awkwardly the first night and woke up the next morning with a very crookneck, so much so he couldn’t move his head at all much less bike the second 60 km. This necessitated a change in plans as we had a ferry scheduled for the following day so we hopped a train to the closest town to the port which cut down our mileage considerably. We then took a ferry to Belfast and another train to get to Dublin.
Moving bikes on and off the ferries and trains is always stressful because, much like land border crossings in Africa, each one is slightly different and everyone expects that you will know how things operate on this specific train/ferry. Unfortunately for visitors like us, each one is unique and likely not at all the same as the previous ones you have done. For example, on some trains you simply roll your bike on, panniers still attached, and strap them to the side of the train car in the wheelchair or luggage sections. This is by far the easiest yet least frequent method we have found – but oh do we love it when it happens! On other trains, you have to take the bags off and put them by your seat but hang up the bikes in specifically designated areas. Sometimes there is only one bike per area, sometimes two, sometimes four and sometimes 20, but the thing is that no one can tell you ahead of time, so you have to figure it out while jostling for space with everyone else who is boarding the train…and we have four bikes and 12 bags to negotiate. Once inside, how you place the bikes is different – sometimes you hang them up with the back wheel up, sometimes with the front wheel up, sometimes they are on an angle, sometimes they are in little individual stalls. It is a lesson in going with the flow of how things are done where you are, not how you think they should be or how you’ve done them in the past.
Similarly, with the ferries, sometimes they simply roll them on the deck of the boat and carry your bags to your seat or cabin as luggage. Other times, especially on larger ferries, you roll on with the cars and trucks. There may be a bike rack to park in if you are lucky. If not, you wait around until someone shows you where to go. We’ve had the bikes stored in the wheelhouse of a small ferry in the Aran Islands, in an engineering room of a larger ferry to Belfast, and on a formal bike rack alongside the cars going to France. Flexibility is key as is being patient, and humble. When I was fully scolded by the Swiss train conductor for putting two bikes where there was only supposed to be one and thus somewhat blocking the path, I had to apologize profusely as he wagged his finger disapprovingly at me eventually helping me solve the problem by showing me where I could put the second bike. The thing is that arguing with or getting upset by his castigation would only have made the situation more tense. With this kind of travel, it is better to be kind and gentle even if you are boiling inside for you are a guest in their country and not just representing yourself, but your entire country. In the end, everything will be fine – the bikes get loaded and we reach our destination.
With the majority of our transportation hassles behind us, we enjoyed a couple days in Dublin listening to pub music, enjoying the big city vibe, and doing our last-minute planning. Ireland is a big island with varied and diverse terrain. One could easily spend an entire summer biking across the countryside, but realistically we could only spend about two or three weeks if we were going to also do the European areas we wanted to see as well. This meant we had to choose just one area for our bike ride. Friends we met hiking in Scotland last year, Lee and Lisa from 
We were very happy with our decision as the biking was truly dramatic, perhaps some of the most beautiful bike rides we have ever ridden. The Burren’s stark hillsides, eerily quiet road, and endless undulating terrain made us feel as if we were on a totally different continent, if not the planet. This is the area is also known for the dramatic Cliffs of Moher (Cliffs of Insanity if you are a Princess Bride fan or cliff which held the cave and lake with the locket horcrux in the 6th Harry Potter movie). We visited the Cliffs late in the evening to catch the sunset – and oh what a sunset it was!
On the Aran Islands, our favorite place was the rarely visited Dún Dúchatair (the Black Fort). Perched on a rocky but crumbling coastal cliff, initially built more than 3,000 years ago then re-fortified just 1,000 years ago, no one is sure of what the purpose of the structures was, only that eons of storms, tsunamis and erosion have obscured the true purpose. Most tourists who visit the Aran Islands only come for a day trip, so tend to head straight to Dún Aonghasa, the larger and more developed site on the other side of the island. Because we were staying the night on the island and that Colburn and I chose to visit Dún Dúchatair late in the afternoon, there was not another soul anywhere in the area. We passed a farmer planting vegetables in the thin and rocky soil about 4 or 5 km from the entrance to the site, but no one else at all. In fact, there were barely even any paths from foot traffic anywhere in the site.
Being there late in the afternoon as the sun was low on the western horizon, waves crashing against the steep cliffs and the salty dampness of ocean air clinging to our skin, it was easy to imagine this place as a home or an outpost 3,000 years ago. The remnants of the buildings have openings to the southeast to let in the early morning light and the stout backs designed to protect from the prevailing winds. The terraced walls of defense are 13 feet thick in some areas and are built to the very edge of a 300-foot cliff, making the area easy to defend from invaders. As with the Burren, we felt that we had been transported back in time or far, far away. It was magical.
The third place we fell in love with was Doolough Valley. The scenery is stunning but the history here is heart-breaking. During the famine of 1849, many of the locals relied on relief aid from the government but the officials required that the hundreds of starving people walk 12 miles to see them at the hunting lodge where they were staying in order to reauthorize their famine aid. More than 17 people are known to have died because of the energy expenditure needed to accomplish this arduous walk – 24 miles round trip. There are memorials on the pass and also in the surrounding towns. It was very sobering to contrast our life of abundance with this level of starvation less than 200 years ago.
We had far too many close calls where drivers would pass us at full speed without allowing for a safe passing distance (1.5 meters in Ireland) even on the crest of a hill, blind corners and when another car was coming the other way. They simply continued in the lane as if we were not there, running one or more of us off the road more than once. After hearing of our travails, our brother-in-law sent us an idea which I think is brilliant – put a brightly colored pool noodle across the back of your bike so that it sticks out the required 1.5 meters. This gives drivers an indication of what a “safe passing distance” looks like in real life. I had a similar idea while riding but was much more passive aggressive about it – I would attach a sharp object (like broken glass) on the end so that if someone did come too close, it would scratch their car’s paint. I would consider the damage from this a natural consequence for them not respecting the required safe distance. In the end, we truly enjoyed parts of biking Ireland but would probably not do it again until there are either proper bike paths, a change of heart from drivers, or another way of assuring our safety.
Ending off our time in Ireland was a true treat where we were able to meet up with our friend and third child, Zara, and meet her parents for the first time. We met Zara diving in Mozambique almost two years ago and have stayed in contact with her ever since. Seeing her again in a totally different environment and meeting her parents reminded us of why we travel – in the end, it is the people you meet and the experiences you have that make traveling worthwhile. We were thoroughly spoiled by their hospitality and fell in love with Northern Ireland.
The Shindells - Four to Go 