Day 15 - Judenburg to Stadl an der Mur - ride total 1, 111 k, 8,918 m

On the 26th of April 1945, Austen Deans began his march to freedom, having been held as a Prisoner of War (POW) for about four years. The last POW camp he was in, Stalag XVIIIA was located near Pols in Austria. 

My good friend Paul Deans (Austen's son)  has shared Austen's march to Freedom POW diary with me and that is why we traveled to Judennburg so that we can then ride our bikes on the journey Austen took to his eventual freedom in April/May 1945 - 79 years ago. 

Austen was a war artist and even though wounded in Crete and captured in 1941 he continued to paint in captivity, as he did during his entire life. 

I had the good fortune of meeting Austen on many occasions and he was such a lovely man. What he endured during his war service and those four years as POW we can not even partly come to comprehend.

So, this part of the ride is to see the country Austen traveled through, to put real context in to his paintings that I've seen from this era and in a way to say thanks to Austen, my own Dad, my Uncles and all those men who went away to fight in war - that meant we were able to grow up and live in peace. Sadly as we know, it was not the "War to end all wars".

10 km's out of Judenburg the Pols paper mill came in to view and although it has been here on the site since the 1700's, today it looks nothing like it would have in 1945. In recent years 130 million Euro has been didn't upgrading it. We stopped and took some pictures and then rode to try and find Sauerbrunn Castle (it was ruin in 1945 when Austen mentioned he painted it) unfortunately it looks like nature may have reclaimed it or it is hidden behind trees as we could not locate it.

We then rode West, on up the valley, riding through the towns Austen mentioned like, Thalheim, Scheduling (or morning tea stop) and Murau (our ice cream Sunday stop).

We stayed close to and followed virtually all the way, the Mur river up the valley floor. The hills bounding the valley rise up to mountains and once out of the valley they are mostly tree clad.

Austen was a mountain man and mountaineer and loved to paint mountains and even though held as a POW his appreciation of nature and the landscape can be felt when his diary talks of the being "a grand glorious clear day, grand morning, looking down the light filled valley to Grossenburg" - he was keen to get to the painting he had started.

On his march they had to beg, steal or borrow just to have food and sleep where they could - farmers barns are mentioned and I saw many very old barns each one making me think "was this a barn Austen slept in"?

While the day was not hot, the temperature in the high teens made for comfortable riding for us. It was a different story back in April/May 1945  when there was snow on the ground.

It's been a very good day and I'm very pleased to be here seeing the country first hand and while much would have changed in the last 80 years, fortunately the landscape and the majority of farm buildings are probably just as Austen saw them back then. The back roads, lanes and walking paths that I rode would be very similar (less the sealed surface), however there would not have been the noise from the motorway.

 
















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