I must first and foremost apologise (mainly to
Brian) for the delay in typing up the next few posts. It has been a hectic few days with minimal
facilities, and my motivation to type on my phone has been somewhat lacking.
Here we go. Day 3.
After deciding to have a bit of a lie in, due to
a second late night, we had a quick breakfast at our little apartment in
Pforzheim, and left around 10am. With
the Sat Nav set to ‘Am Eiskanal’, our first stop, another full day of driving
was ahead of us. There were a couple of
pit stops and a couple of little disagreements between Rob and the Sat nav in
the town, meant we took a few little detours in the town and according to Sat
Nav we ‘reached our destination’ on the wrong side of the river. All is well that ends well and we arrived at
our destination, The Olympic White water course in Ausburg.
First constructed in 1972, this course remains
and impressive feat of engineering, and I feel it may never be beaten. It is free to use and free to Park, the most
fantastic resource you could imagine. We
walked the course first to have a look at the levels. There was a high release, and this meant
features were ‘meaty’ on the main course.
Rob felt that in the middle of all the driving, that it was at too high
of a level for him to enjoy. I would not
have attempted it without Rob on the water, and even if Rob had decided to
paddle, I may have chosen to give it a miss this year anyway. I will have to come back next year and take
another look. We walked up to see the
weir where the dam holds back water in the river, to allow the river to be
diverted in to the white water course. The
noise is incredible, you can feel the power of the water from on the bridge
above, and the wave below is mesmerising.
Matt decided to get on to have a play on the
pre-course and slalom training route.
There is a little ‘diversion’ at the top of the main course which takes
you down a much nicer little channel.
Rob and I watched, and got some pictures and video from the bank. (I only got video and at this hour I can't work out how to put video in to these blog things. I'll post a video on facebook for now and see if I can figure it out another day!)
We had lunch in the car park, with ‘Matt’s Cafe’
providing hot drinks (this is a tool box kitted out for making tea and coffee
ANYWHERE which Matt keeps in his car at all times!) and then we were on the
road again.
Our next destination was Grosreifling – Austria. The day had gotten away from us again and a
bit of bad luck with the traffic and roadworks on the Motorway, meant we
arrived after dark. Rob found the owner
of the campsite and managed to get the key and directions to our ‘Duck Chalet’,
down the gravel track and to the right.
It took a few minutes or so as the owner, clearly having finished ‘work’
some hours before had had one too many and was super chatty!
We found our cozy little duck, which was a little
more basic than we had first thought.
With no way to cook, and too late to mess with finding the kitchen at
the top of the hill (or not wanting to get stuck with chatty owner so late in
the night), I made wraps from the cold lunch stuff in Rob’s travel fridge, and
then we all got to bed for some much needed sleep!
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