Bad Ischl to Seekirchen am Wallersee

August 29, 2018

With a bonus trip

Today was a wild day. You'll understand by the end. First, my hostel accommodations were actually quite good. Shortly after 10pm I decided to just get up and turn off the light. No one complained, and I apparently fell straight to sleep and stayed that way until shortly before 7am. Everyone else was either awake or waking up by then so rather than going back to sleep, I decided to get up and head out. The breakfast buffet cost €10 so I stopped by the grocery store and bought some rolls instead. Two dear old ladies wished me a good meal as I sat out on the curb eating my rolls. I should also add that the hostel did, however, have the second most friendly cat in Austria.

From Bad Ischl I was heading for the Wolfgangsee. In my ranking of the most scenic lakes it rates after the Halstättersee and the Traunsee. The route from Bad Ischl must have been changed since I last rode there. It didn't match the hospital track I had not do I recall any of it. At least it was pretty flat. I also passed one of the girls from the room jogging in the opposite direction. She waved at me as we passed. It took me a moment to figure out why she was waving until I recognized her shoes.

There are many various routes to a given point in the Salzkammergut and that created an unintended detour to the north side of the Wolfgangsee. Thinking there was a picture I wanted to retake in Strobl, I opted to backtrack instead of continue. Turns out the picture I wanted to retake was actually on the opposite end of the lake in St Gilgen so I could have kept going. I still got my photo and I still got to enjoy the ride along with a lot of other people. The lakes are a super hot spot with the locals. The trails were nearly crammed.

The photo spot I was looking. I like the original picture better.

From the Wolfgangsee it was a slow grind uphill for awhile followed by a very quick downhill on the Bundesstraße to the Mondsee where I stopped to contemplate making a quick trip up the Attersee. The weather tomorrow is iffy so I decided with my early start to cover more ground today than planned. After deliberating for a bit I decided not to go to the Attersee and headed along the Mondsee instead.

There were lots of people bathing along the Mondsee and Wolfgangsee, fortunately all properly clothed this time. I had to use restraint to avoid stopping at every viewing point to take pictures. With picture stops I was getting about 5 miles in an hour, and that was a bit too slow, even for a vacation.

About halfway down the lake the path heads out into the countryside in the direction of Thalgau. It's a very scenic ride through the valley between the rolling hills with farms and their big old farmhouses. There were hardly any cars, the hoards of bikers thinned out, and it was just a nice peaceful ride, way more my style and amazingly I actually remembered most of the route here.

Looking back at the mountains on the way to Thalgau

Beyond Thalgau came the long hill that I distinctly remember from the last ride, partly because I was so proud of myself for riding it instead of pushing. Having ridden it twice now, I'm pretty proud of 3 years ago me for having ridden it. With all the traffic thundering past it wasn't much fun, even with a separate path the whole way. At the top I got passed by an E-Biker who took the opportunity to lecture me on why I should have an E-Bike for a hill like this. Yeah, well, when I get to the top on my recumbent at least I have the pleasure of knowing I accomplished something tough.

Looking back down the long hill. This is only half of it. The rest is around the curve at the bottom.

After Thalgau I passed briefly through the still ugly Eugendorf, except this year I skipped stopping at one of the many grocery stores and headed north to Seekirchen am Wallersee where I had booked a hotel.

The route up to Seekirchen was mostly along a busier road. While a reasonably nice ride, it was a bit noisy. No scenic lakes along that route meant that I made much better time and ended up in Seekirchen at 3:30pm, much too early to end my day. I happened by a Lidl and stopped in to raid their bakery for a bretzel and a pastry. It was still too early to end the day and the weather was pretty much perfect so I decided that despite having already ridden 40 miles with a few longer hills, that I'd ride up to the Obertrumersee, Mattsee, and Granbensee. The route looked pretty flat on my map so I figured no problem. A 20 mile round trip at most.

There is theoretically not a signed route to the set of 3 lakes, but there is path along the road that leads there so off I went. Except navigating to the seciton of road where the path started involved riding up a fairly good hill or two. Once the path started I figured the hills would be done, but no, there were more of them. You essentially go up over a decent sized hill and then down the other side to get to the Obertrumersee. On the descent into Obertrum (which obviously is on the Obertrumersee), is quite a lengthy descent. The whole way down I was debating whether I'd ever make it back up that hill.

The views on the south end of the lake weren't that great so I decided to ride up to Mattsee. That way I'd be able to see both of the lakes. Wouldn't you know it, the bike path goes up and down all sorts of hills on the east side of the lake. And then there's Mattsee. In true Alpine fashion, they're built on a hill. But first the path goes down to lake level, and then it goes steeply uphill to get down into Mattsee. Madness, I tell you. Utter madness. I was planning to just do an out and back to save on mileage, but the route looked flatter on the west side of the lake so I decided I'd rather bike an extra mile or so than grind back up those hills.

Mattsee was a nice little town with some character and even a bit of harm. There's a little palace there somewhere too, but I didn't take the time or effort to hunt it down. Views of the Mattsee are scarce from the trail, but that's ok. I have hundreds of pictures of scenic lakes now. I don't really need more. It also turned out that I was right about the west side of the lake. Much flatter. There was one small climb, but it was an easy one and there were some nice views of the south end of the lake as well. Also, the Granbensee is not much of a lake. In Minnesota they'd probably call it a big pond.

Back in Obertrum it was time to tackle that horrid hill going out of town. You know what? It actually wasn't as bad as I feared. My mapping app said it was 100 meter gain, but it was over such a long distance that I actually was able to ride it on the middle chainring. On a recumbent that means the hill isn't that steep. Nearly every hill is a granny gear hill for me. The rest of the ride back to Seekirchen was more or less downhill.

View of the many distant mountains on the way back to Seekirchen

I'm now installed in my very nice hotel for the night. Today is their day off, but they were kind enough to honor my reservation through booking.com and now I've essentially got the entire hotel to myself. I also found a little pizza and kebab shop literally around the corner saving me a long walk around town to find food. Their pizza crust was outstanding and honestly the best part of the pizza. They need to take over making pizza for the horrible cafe back in Admont where the pizza crust better resembled cardboard. Quite literally.

I've requested breakfast at 9am. Later is better tomorrow with rain projected in the morning. At the moment midday is supposed to be looking better, but given the ever changing nature of the weather, you never know. Having ridden up to the 3 lakes today, I am considering going beyond Mondsee (the town) where I've reserved a room for tomorrow night and riding over to the Attersee and along there, depending on how the weather plays out. Then Friday I'll ride from the town of Mondsee (obviously situated on the Mondsee) over to Salzburg. There is only a bus connection to Salzburg from Mondsee and it is a fairly short ride of around 20 miles that I have already done once in threatening weather. Salzburg has my favorite things: bakeries, and bookstores. I've seen all the sights there multiple times. Depending on weather, I may ride the palace route on Saturday or maybe even go out to the Gollinger Wasserfall. If it rains, there's one museum left that I've never visited. Then Sunday back to München for my lengthy flight home to my lonely cats.

Today's ride: 60 miles (97 km)
Total: 329 miles (529 km)

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