23 July: Austria – tasting the cycle routes of Corinthia

Author: Mr A

Location: Ferlach, Austria

We were in the region of southern Austria called Corinthia – nope I’d never heard of either! Lonely Planet doesn’t often come up trumps, it on this occasion we liked the sound of the “lesser known” description, and judging by the nice quiet roads it does seem to be off the usual routes of the global tourist, but well frequented by Northern Europeans judging by the number plates (Germany, Belgium, Netherlands in particular).

We rode off once again to explore a section of the 510m Drau Cycleway (R1) that runs along the river of the same name from Italy’s Tirol region to Maribor in Slovenia. Nope, not heard of that either!

A perfectly still morning as we set off on our ride
An empty path framed by mountains a typical view
Riding through fields of sweet corn

Well the section we did was an absolute delight, with the mountains framing our view one one side, and the glistening river on the other. Even on a Tuesday there were a few other riders about, but nothing like the crowds we had seen in other areas.

Mirror like perfection on the river
A shady part of the cycle – we spotted a red squirrel here…sadly he spotted us first and scuttled away into the trees
Beautiful flowers line the pathway…after photographing this a young deer bounded out of the woods, eyed us suspiciously for a few seconds then bounded away…no photos sorry!

We ended up completing all of this section (50km/32 miles), riding out and back, then swinging by a “bathing lake” as they call them here. Again we only saw locals, and that was nice. Catherine had a swim across, I had a more urgent matter to attend to of a nap.

The swimming lake – the mountains made a great goal when swimming

We had noticed this rather posh and traditional looking restaurant yesterday, and today decided to give it a go for late lunch.

A glass of Gruner Veltliner with lunch

We struck lucky, they made a lot of their own meat products, served a delicious cooling beer for me, local wine for madam, and the whole meal cost less then a Sydney breakfast.

Back at camp I took our chairs and sun umbrella (we don’t have an awning so brought one of these to help provide some shade…it looks ridiculous so no photos!) , and set everything up next to our very own mountain stream that flowed along our car park home. The water was ice cold from the mountains and was so refreshing, its been mid 30s (centigrade) again today.

All in all a cracking day….yet again. Riding a trail away from cars, eating and drinking local fare, then getting our spice kick from one of Catherine ‘s concoctions in the evening. Bliss…

2 Replies to “23 July: Austria – tasting the cycle routes of Corinthia”

  1. How nice to have seen a red squirrel. Read the Pine Marten is helping to
    control the grey squirrels in (I think) Ireland.
    Just in case you are keen to add to your list of sightings, there are white squirrels in Brevard, No Carolina. Nothing like a little trivia to make your day.
    Loved the “swimming lake”.

    1. Didn’t know about the white squirrels – we had better get exploring over there! We have seen red squirrels in France, but here they are more chocolatey than those, so maybe slightly different, or perhaps adapted to the cooler temperatures…

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