Day 14: Those lads are in the nip!

Krems to Tulln (40km)

Andreas and Nici, my savours from day 4 have invited me to stay in Nici’s home town of Tulln tonight. Tulln is only around 40km from Krems which meant that I had a nice gentle day of kayaking ahead of me. The day started off a little frustratingly, my phone seemed to be shedding battery at an alarming rate (I still don’t know what caused it, but it seems to be fixed now) and everything was closed due to the holiday. I eventually found a petrol station that was open and stocked up for the day. It was late morning before I got onto the river, but I was soon doddering passed the 2,000km sign.

About 20km before reaching Tulln, I came to another lock. This time it was quite clear what needed to be done, I exited the water about 2km from the lock and pulled the kayak to an adjacent stream, paddled past the lock and back into the main river. The whole process takes quite a while, mostly because the parallel stream doesn’t have much current, but I’ve certainly had worse lock experiences. As I was re-entering the Danube, I passed a guy sunbathing completely bollock naked. This wasn’t as surprising as it might’ve been had I just arrived in Austria. For the past few days, the number of naked (male) sunbathers at the side of the river has been unbelievable. I have even witnessed a guy driving a speed boat down the centre of the river, dressed in nothing except his god given skin. I’m starting to feel like the weirdo for wearing clothes, although I am not in a great rush to abandon my apparel just yet, imagine the sun burns!

As they always do, the water flooding through the lock then pushed me onwards at a great rate and I was soon approaching Tulln. I had messaged Nici when I was passing the lock, but a combination of the message not going through and my good speed meant that I arrived in Tulln before they did. They had arranged for me to stay in the yacht haven, some of the yachts were reminiscent of those from Dubai and my wee kayak looked quite modest in comparison. I spotted one that I liked and if it is unattended tomorrow morning, I will be continuing to the Black Sea in a bit more style. When they did arrive a few minutes later, they were armed with a magnificent banner in my honour, what a reception! We then wandered to the hotel that they had arranged for me to stay in, after checking in, we headed for dinner. It was great having two native speakers with me, allowing me to comprehensively increase my culinary choices. Dinner was excellent, as was the ice cream that followed. We then headed down to the river but were swiftly forced to retreat by the army of mosquitos. A very enjoyable evening with my guardian angels, a wonderfully lovely couple. Andreas and Nici are now off for a vacation near Salzburg to recreate their first meeting. For me, it’s onwards, not much more of Austria to go, but still plenty of this fine river to enjoy.