While still cold, the night was definitely warmer than last. We had quite a long day ahead of us, so we packed and got on the road as quickly as possible. Unfortunately we had to back track a few kilometres towards Ingolstadt because there was no bridge across the Danube near our camp-site. Going backwards before you start is never a good thing, especially with a 50 mile day ahead of you.
We rejoined the Danube route and continued towards Weltenburg. From Weltenburg we hoped to take a ferry along the Danube to Kelheim. This was to serve two purposes, give us a break from cycling and avoid a few steep hills! We were following the marked route with no trouble, until we decided to take a shorter route along the river that was clearly marked on our map as a paved cycle track. The track turned out to be unsigned and nothing more than a potholed dirt track. What should have been a quick cut through turned out to be nothing of the sort. It was with some relief that we arrived in Weltenburg and bought two tickets for the ferry.
As we had missed the 12:30pm ferry we had 45minutes to kill, so we had an early lunch. During this time we met a very nice German guy who, through very little English and our even poorer German, explained that he had a touring cycle and was going on a 5000km tour next year.
When it came time to board the boat we were ushered to the front because we had bicycles. This didn't seem to please the huge amount of OAPs who were waiting to board. The ferry to Kelheim is a sightseeing boat and takes about 20minutes to travel downstream and about 40minutes the other way. Any later in the year and it wouldn't have been running. The journey was quite pleasant, the boat was warm and they served coffee. The scenery was also very nice as we sailed through a narrow gorge, passing several castles along the way.
We may have been first on, but the other end we had to wait for everyone to get off and then fight through the crowds of people who seemed content to stop as soon as they had left the boat. As soon as we were back on the road we made good progress and the weather eventually started to get a bit warmer.
We had a random moment when we were stopped by a guy dressed in lederhosen, who told us it was 'his day' and he had to swap something with us. It turned out from his friends that he was getting married and swapping things with passers by is clearly a local custom. One of our bread rolls for a stale pretzel wasn't the best of swaps, but we didn't have much else.
The short boat trip and random moment had done us good and we arrived at our camp-site in Regensburg at about 4pm, earlier than we had thought. Cycling for 7 days straight had caught up with us and after a few too many beers we headed to the tent for the night. Rest day tomorrow!
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