The story goes that a young maiden ventured into the Forest of Dahn to pick berries when a man with ‘dishonourable intent’ thought to be Hans Trap from Berwartstein Castle chased her down to take her ‘innocence’. The young maiden gathered up her skirts and took to flight but in her panic she did not watch where she was going and found herself at a cliff edge – without stopping to think, the young maiden fell over the cliff and because her skirts ballooned out she floated down gently and survived the leap unhurt – ever since at the spot of her leap a spring has flowed. All I know is that stumbling across this set of waterfalls on a bimble around the Austrian and German border was amazing.
New friends
Riding the mountain roads near Cerknica I came across another GS rider with 500,000km on his bike – through broken French and German we agreed that these are the best bikes in the world… and after coffee and lunch and exchange of stories and tribulations we clattered off in our respective directions leaving just a trail of dust behind… 
Hard to think its July
I have been able to ride some incredible eastern European mountain roads this week despite the torrential rain which is still setting as snow at altitude. Dressing for the weather can be a challenge as its often 28 degrees plus at valley floor level but yesterday dropped to just 2.5 degrees at altitude – managed to get everything dry last night so tomorrow will be another new adventure.
As far east as I have ever been…
Today I passed a personal milestone in riding beyond any eastern border in a single trip and onwards towards Kecskemet and Budapest in a north eastern arc – I did some language research before I left and learnt this phrase “Moje vznášadlo je plné úhorov” which as you know means “My hovercraft is full of eels” – useful phase book guidance can be found here…
Goat in the road
Riding the Grossglockner enthused me to try the Nockalmstrasse in the pouring rain… this is a ‘lower alpine pass’ which turned out to be a good move as it was a quieter yet much more technical ride and apart from the usual cattle and horse hazards new ones on me were little tubby Marmots and these youngsters oblivious to the traffic…