At 5am the sun is shining through the hotel window. At 6am it is raining – we have never had such unsettled weather for so long on a tour before. The rain does ease up a bit as we set off and so we’re only damp rather than wet. Finding our way out of Vienna turns out to be easier than it was to find our way in and in a surprisingly short time we are surrounded by green fields again.
The cycling is easy and the sun comes out from behind the clouds. Most of the way we are on top of a straight, flat flood defence dyke. We have a drink at a bar where a group of cycle tourists from New Zealand have stopped. They too are on their way from Vienna to Bratislava and we end up seeing them several times during the day. We play cat and mouse with the showers again, but today we do manage to stay dry by sheltering under trees.
Before we know it, we cross into Slovakia and we are there – Bratislava, the end of our tour. It has taken us 41 days and 3166 kilometres of cycling. We are exactly one week early, not because we have cycled quicker or taken a shorter route, but because we haven’t taken the rest days off the bikes that we had planned.
Once we reach Bratislava we make the normal circuit or two around before we find a hotel. Although we pay the same price as we did for the hotel in Vienna, the quality of the room is much higher Never had a television in the shower before!
We get chance to have a quick look round the city in the evening – we may try and stay an extra day tomorrow, as it looks like there is plenty to see.
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