By Bike

Day 7 (10^th August)– Rieding to Oberwölz Stadt.

What a way to start the day! An amazing dawn view and a steep 5km descent. Whoosh!

Soon though it was onto our big climb of the day – Klippitztörl topping out at 1,637m. Not technically as hard as our previous climbs, its still saps the energy.

As we wind our way up in the shade of forests of beech, fir, and spruce, we notice a lot of small scale forestry operations.

Woodland covers 60% of Carinthia, the highest percentage of forested land in Austria. And nearly 70% are family owned forests of less than 200 ha. Most are selectively logged, the remainder small clear-cuts up to 0.5 ha. They generally look well-managed.

At the top of our climb we found a friendly wooden fella to fill our bidons.

Once down the other side the temperature shot up (again!). We met up with Sue and Liz for lunch in the historic town of Friesach, the oldest in Carinthia (@1,200 years old). The city walls, moat and church are well-preserved and the little museum had lots of interesting displays of medieval crafts, armour and the like.

In the intense heat of the afternoon, our bike route took us to a lovely little lake in the middle of open fields frequented by lots of locals. A great place to rest under a tress, soak hot feet and cool off before our last leg to our campsite at Oberwölz Stadt.

According to Garmin