Day 20 - Munich to Augsburg - ride total 1,520 k, 11,788 m

Well, we got off to our best early start today and were very pleased with ourselves that we were under way by 6:15 as it's looking like it's goibng to be quite a hot day. It's now 8:15 and here we are still in Munich sitting under the shade of a tree outside a Cafe. 

Waiting. 

Waiting for a bike shop across the road to open.

Peter was lead navigator today, followed by Stephen and then me. Riding behind Stephen I noticed his wheel once again had a slight wobble to it. So we stopped to check it and unfortunately found two broken spokes! This is the same wheel that had to have three spokes replaced about 500 km back.

Bugger. 

Good news though, as here we are still in Munich and across from a bike shop only 500 metres off our route. Once again our breakdown could not have happened at a better time or place and so we do consider ourselves very fortunate.

As we sat down outside the Cafe the young woman having her morning coffee struck up a conversation with us in prefect English. Sarah had worked in Sydney for five years and was a keen surfer and a delight to talk to and jumped at the opportunity to have her Pic taken with a Kiwi and an Aussie.

Over our croissant and tea for breakfast we we're talking about how, with our early start we would be in Augsburg (our destination) by lunchtime as we only had 71 km to ride today.

Not only that I remarked what a wonderful invention the bicycle wheel is when you consider the stresses and strains inflicted upon them and when compared with a wagon wheel (the common wheel when bike wheels were invented), how light and strong they are and how you never see bikes with broken wheels!

Whoops. 

Spoken too soon on both scores.

And written too soon as well (this blog was started before we left Munich and is being written as the day unfolds).

The bike shop across the road could do the fix - in two weeks time! That was the call we got from Stephen as Peter and I had popped around the corner to take a closer look and some pics of Nyphenburger Castle. 

So we all re-grouped outside an earlier bike shop that sign said it opened at 10:00. It was decided that rather than wait the 45 minutes for it to open and perhaps be told of a two week wait we decided to head off to Decathlon (the super large French, throughout Europe, sports store with a good bike service department normally). It was only 4 km's away and we were there by 10:00 and here Peter and I are sitting on the footpath in the shade waiting for an update from Stephen. He's been in there a while and not yet come out so fingers crossed all bodes well. 

Yes it did bode well and they can supply a new wheel. By this time it was near to 11:00 and so we decided an early lunch would be the best use of the time so of we went down the road to a delightful restaurant and all had the avocado and chicken salad.

After we'd finished lunch Stephen went back and collected his bike with his new wheel and we were once again under way out of Munich albeit six hours later than when we started. 

The ride from there went quite smoothly with the one downside being we never passed through any town or village with anything like a Cafe or Gelato shop open as much as we would have loved one as by now it had warmed up to the high twenties.

That being so, meant we made it through to our hotel at Augsburg by 4:15 which meant we did the 66 km's after lunch in a little over for hours.

One of our more memorable days once again.