July 15

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It is 300kms to Vienna and I hope to do it in 2 days. The Radweg is glorious, a 2-3 metre wide strip of tarmac on the levee alongside the Donau winding through wooded gorges, occasionally crossing the river by ferry or bridge. The river is very wide, in places more than 200 metres especially where there is a weir which of course creates a dam further up river. The locks are enormous and the tugs push large barges along the Rhine.
Every few kilometres there is a restaurant with cold drinks and cheap meals. I do love being in Germany. The people are a credit to the post-war settlement; the country has come along way from the Nullstunde. Its politicians especially Ardenauer and Willy Brandt have been head and shoulders above the pygmies, with few exceptions, that we have had in Britain since 1955.
After lunch in Linz I cycled along the Donau to Mauthaussen. It was very moving to see fresh flowers underneath the Spanish names of men who I suspect had fought alongside the International Brigades in Spain and were taken prisoner when refugees in the south of France They should not be forgotten. There were little pictures and flowers underneath Italian names who had been partisans and I heard Italian families in front of the memorials.
Perhaps NASA could name one of the next space shuttles after Dora, one of the satellite camps of Mauthaussen, for it was here that the American space programme was born under the direction of Werner von Braun, later the founder and leader of NASA. He used slave labour and many thousands died, but this is not the history that Hollywood likes.
I went down the infamous steps to the quarry and remembered Hermann Langbein “Against all Hope”. I saw couples holding each other, some in tears and felt sure that a grandfather or great uncle must have perished here. I walked slowly back up the 200 or so steps and stopped at the top to remember. Others were doing the same.
I free-wheeled back down the steep hill to join the Radweg and on to Grein where I camped in the municipal site right in the middle of the town. I had covered 162 kms, a new record but I knew that I would pay for it the next morning.

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Photos

The infamous steps down to the quarry
I remember reading of these steps in the book by Hermann Langbein

The quarry.
Here died many brave men from the fight against Franco in Spain and Italian partisans