Day11

Starting the day with a painful climb and later chasing back to Austria.

Czech Republic – Poland

After getting up it took a good while and a long climb until there was a supermarket showing up in front of us. Coffee, kefir drinks, poppy seed pastry, not so bad for a beginning. From here it was obvious that the mountains around us must be a popular ski resort during the winter. Trying to get along with English was clearly not such a great plan, but as in Czech Rep. the day before, German was quite common to get along. After returning back onto the road after trying one or the other shortcut through the woods, we finally made it to the top of Krkonoše National Park. As the check point was not equipped with anybody from the tcr team anymore, we followed the same procedure again. Coffee, receipt, picture, email. Then we moved ahead to the toughed passage of the day. Descending the section that must be climbed right after, again. Ouch, already getting down this hill was so steep that we stopped in between to relax the hands from braking forces.

NICO: At this point I was close to crying again, I felt anger stepping up. This desend was no joy at all and sure would be no joy on the way back! It obviously seamed tob e just a sensless task tob e done. A task to be done, with this view I could hold back my anger. It tried to come back on the uphill, but when I reached the top, I was laughing out load!

The required starting point of the parcours was very close to another supermarket which invited us for another resupply. I asked Nico to hand over her two biggest bags so there was a chance for her to climb a good part of this brutal climb. As we made it to the middle section on the bike, we had some rest. From here I continued climbing and Nico decided to get rid of her shoes and walk her bike up through the last section. We met on top and had some local soup for lunch. After finishing that we descended back into Vrchlabi, again with a short rest in the park, we spent the last night in. As we continued we did not ride for a long time until we stopped for dinner and Nico did not have any appetite at all. Finally we added four or six ice creams to our buffet and she could reload some carbs. Cornichons, salami, cheese, fish, tomatoes and cucumber went into my stomach and we prepared two sandwiches for the night or breakfast. When we crossed the river Elbe there was some concert or festival happening. Smalls tents were set up on any grass grounds in Jaromer, it looked quite odd how this „dead“ small place got populated by so many people, cars and tents at once! In a corner in Libnikovice we found a comfy resting place again. Nico fell asleep, so did I. After an hour I ask her how she felt and we decided to stay at this place until the next day early morning. This is how we paid our tribute to checkpoint3.

 

<– Day 10 | Day 12 –>