August 3, 2023
Spittal an der Drau -> Klagenfurt am Worthensee
Cold hot springs, and meeting fellow solo travellers
I woke up this morning around 7:30 with the sun shining outside. It had rained overnight, as the ground was still wet, but today looked like the weather was going t be significantly nicer. I got dressed and headed across the parking lot to the pizzeria where the breakfast buffet was. The hostel I stayed at had a standard European breakfast: Broetchen with hard boiled eggs, cold cuts, cheese, and yogurt. I ate about 4 broetchen with fixings, and a bowl of yogurt before going on my way.
I left the hostel around 10 am after taking my time packing up. I was in a good mood as I rode towards Villach. The sun was shining, and it was still quite warm. The weather was forecasting thunderstorms starting around 1pm, but I wasn't worried about that yet. My first stop was one of the few natural Hot springs in Austria: Maibachl. I had read that the hot spring isn't always full of water. It takes exceptional rainfall or spring snowmelt to bring the water table high enough for the hot spring to fill with warm water. I figured there might be a chance since we had been having so much rain. When I got to the hot spring, there was in fact water, but it was not hot. It was warmer than you would expect for a mountain stream, maybe 80F, but not warm enough to comfortably soak. Walking around, you could feel warm spots in the gravel, where the hot spring water was mixing with the cold runoff.
I stayed there for a short while, until it started to rain. That was my queue to get back on the road. As I rode through Villach, I saw the Kirchfest going on. It looked like a typical county fair, except there was no fairgrounds. Carnival rides and food stands were setup throughout the city. Every vacant lot was filled with carnival activity. Everything, however, was closed When I rode through. It seemed to be more of an evening event, and it was still too early. I didn't want to wait around that long, I wanted to get to Klagenfurt before the real thunderstorms hit. The weather service was predicting 2 inches of rain overnight, and was warning about possible floods.
I rode as quickly as I could to Klagenfurt, takin in the views from the shore of the Worthensee as I went. At the end of the lake near Klagenfurt, I decided that I needed to swim in this lake at least once while I was here. Even though it was cold and windy outside, the water was still quite warm. I would guess upper 70's (F). As I was getting out of the water, the first real thunderstorm hit. I booked it to the hostel that I had reserved downtown. Upon arrival at the hostel, I saw a girl about my age with a loaded touring bike outside the hostel door. She was from Graz, and doing a week long trip. She said her door code didn't work, so I tried mine. It also didn't work. A second girl who was staying at the hostel came back from a grocery store run and tried her code, it also didn't work. Something was wrong with the door lock, and we all emailed the hostel management. Within 5 minutes, the hostel manager arrived and let us in. A couple minutes later, the door lock spontaneously started working again.
While I was checking in, another solo bike-tourist (maybe 5 years older than me) showed up. He was from Guangzoh, China, and had started in Stuttgart. He was doing between 120-200km/day, spending up to 12 hours each day in the saddle. More hardcore than me. This was the demographic of hostel travellers I had expected all along on my trip. Up until this point, most of the people I had met at hostels had been either large youth groups, or older couples looking to save money. Solo travellers seem to be quite rare along the route I am doing. I was glad to have the company of other bike-packing solo travellers.
The girl went straight to the kitchen and made herself dinner, but the Chinese guy and I hung out for a while. I questioned him about his full body armor set he was wearing. Was he riding a motorcycle or something? He explained to me that he had a bad bike crash last summer while descending Grimselpass. Half way down the descent, his brakes stopped working, and he crashed into the wall of a tunnel breaking his collarbone. Ever since then, he wears full body armor while road biking. I told him that I had done that same descent about 2 weeks ago, and I am pretty sure I know which tunnel he crashed in.
He then went to shower, and I walked to the grocery store. Right as I left the hostel, a very gnarly thunderstorm rolled over Klagenfurt. Drenching rain, bright flashes of lightning, and loud, rumbling thunder gave me a spectacular show as I walked through the city. I was wearing a rain jacket, but didn't wear rain pants, as I thought it wouldn't rain that hard. By the time I got to the store I was dripping wet. I wandered aimlessly through the store trying to cobble together a low-effort dinner. I got a container of Italian grapes, a liter of pear juice, some fresh semmel rolls, a carton of eggs, a container of yogurt, a package of bergkaese, a frozen package of cheese dumplings, and some marzipan. I figured whatever leftovers I had I could eat for breakfast.
When I got back to the hostel, I hard boiled my eggs, and ate them with cheese on the semmel rolls. I ate my grapes, and tried the cheese dumplings. The dumplings, unfortunately were not my favorite. I cleaned up the kitchen, showered, washed my clothes in the sink, then headed to bed.
Today's ride: 58 miles (93 km)
Total: 2,028 miles (3,264 km)
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1 year ago
1 year ago
1 year ago
Plan to go north, if you do no have to cross Kärnten again for that!
And we wish you an end with all these thunderstorms!
1 year ago