Just 15km to add to the total making it 1753km.

A leisurely breakfast at the hotel and we were ready to explore Innsbruck properly.

Strolling back through the old town to the amazing Court Church. Here lies the mausoleum of the Emperor Maximillion of the Hapsburg dynasty. An incredible tomb surrounded by bronze statues of his favoured friends and relatives, it was started during his lifetime and took 100 years to complete. The detailed work on the statues was beautiful.

The bizarre thing was that after the mausoleum was completed his body was never interred there but remained where he died and was first buried. Next stop the cathedral – a severe outside but elaborately intricate inside. Not so much to our taste and we did not linger long among enormous tour groups, guides vying for the best positions and to be heard. We were grateful not to be ‘herded’ in that fashion.

A good dose of culture and the onset of rain and we took refuge in an old coffee shop to read and blog. Back to the hotel to retrieve our bikes and belongings as we planned to camp that night just outside the city near the start of the road up the Brenner pass that we were going to tackle the following day.

For our next bit of culture we cycled the few Km to Schloss Albass, the summer palace of the Hapsburgs over looking the city. The building and gardens were beautiful and it was full of rooms of armoury, portraits, glasswork. The Spanish Hall a huge room with beautiful wooden ceiling and covered in paintings – again of the favoured dukes and family. It was set out for a piano concert that evening and would have been an amazing setting for it.

Then to find the campsite. First a few km up the hill on the road starting the Brenner Pass – 100m or so in the bag for the next day. As we cycled round the hairpins a beautiful rainbow arched across the sky. Then 5km from the turn off to the capsire – steeply up hill! Our day off and we still did 400m of climbing. However we felt fresh and knew it was a short distance so cruised up. The campsite was on a lake but was a real ‘resort’.

By far our most expensive campsite it had the smallest pitches and hard ground! I suppose near a major city it was no surprise. We had had a good day and were feeling very refreshed to tackle the next section of the trip.