Regensburg to Deggendorf

We were all woken up about 6am with a giant clap of thunder and pouring rain. Problems today, I thought. Yes, but not in the way I figured.

The storm blew quickly past and probably kept the morning a bit cooler but it also made everything damp and muggy.

We me good time out of Regensburg and shortly after noon we were in Straubing, home to two breweries, Röhrl and Karmelieten. Röhrl was not far off our path so we stopped in.

Röhrl Weizen and Helles

 The place reeked of cigarette smoke -- more than could be accounted for by what built up in the upholstery before the smoking ban, but it was cool and dark. The beer was OK -- though after having wheat beers that were banana laden, Tim thought this one could use a bit more banana. The helles had a little something in the finish, but not enough to stop me from ordering a second.

Röhrl Dunkel and Pils

They had no food whatsoever, so we decided to find a place to eat, hopefully with the town's other brewery. After riding around a bit, we ended up stopping at the Bayerischer Löwe, which served Acro Bräu from Moos (which doesn't seem to be anywhere near here, but we saw lots of outlets in the area).

Beer garden at Bayerishe Löwe

Service was slow, but we didn't care -- we were trying to wait out the hotest part of the day. They beers were fine, but it was getting so hot that I really sort of lost interest in the beer. That tells you how hot it was.

Acro Bräu Helles and Pils

It turns out I made a slight math error in my route "cheat sheets" and instead of 81km it was actually 88km from city center to city center. Oops.

The afternoon dragged on and on. We stopped frequently for shade and water and once, some ice cream. At our last rest stop they had a thermometer and it read 35 deg C (= 95 deg F). This was in the shade at 5:15pm.

To make matters worse, this was the most borring stretch of the whole ride. It is the "Danube Bike Trail" but we rarely saw the river. It was basically riding thru fields of corn, wheat and barley with very few trees (means no shade) -- we could have been in Iowa or Kansas for most of the time.

The hotel is a bit on the outskirts of town. They only had Paulaner beers, so we had a light dinner and called it an early night.

Tomorrow we ride to Passau, where we'll have a rest day. Should be a short ride (60km) but it will be hot again and the others want to check my math.

Distance ridden: 92km
Total distance: 1363 km