Day 49: Sankt Gilgen to Gmunden

May 31, 2022

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The owner of our Falkenstein Inn told us that he has been having a bit of a run of Canadian visitors, with some more coming tomorrow. But he didn't know if they were coming by bike, making them irrelevant to us! With the legacy (or current reality) of covid, he said, business is quieter, something he thought was maybe a good thing.

Sankt Gilgen certainly is equipped for tourists, with lots of guest houses and cafes, plus a gondola lift. And the lake and mountains, of course, are the huge draw.

The lake does have the necessary turquoise hue.

A tourist - something - looks nice whatever it is.

Our first step was to set off along the lake. Look how nice our path is!

The basic program for the day was to follow first the Wolfgangsee, then the Ischl river, which exits the See, to Bad Ischl, where it joins the Traun. After that it was follow the Traun to, yes, the Traunsee, and along the Traunsee to our destination at Gmunden. It was a simple sequence, and as the track shows, generally downhill as the rivers descended.

Looking across the Wolfgangsee to Sangt Wolfgang. You would need to swing around the east end of the lake to reach this place.

There were some nice forest sections to the path.

...but mostly it looked like this - spectacular.

Toward the east end of the lake (Wolfgangsee) there is a protected marsh, with a lot of signage and an observation tower. They mention a lot of marsh type plants and insects, like the two shown. One other that was mentioned was the rare Siberian Iris - which we already photographed in a different marsh. We looked in this marsh, but frankly only saw two ducks!

As we carried along the lake and the river, we were riding in beautiful countryside and with wonderful houses, that really do merit the half dozen photos that follow, as we try to capture and remember the wonder of it.

One topic of conversation for us, looking at all this, was the trivial question of which hills and meadows would have been best for running Julie Andrews across for the Sound of Music. We rejected hills that were too steep - can't sing if you are out of breath, and ones that were not green enough, unless that was because of a lot of flowers. Finally Dodie devised the theory that you could run Julie on the flat, and then tilt the camera. In all of this I suspect Dodie was just humouring me, knowing what a sucker I am for kitch and for celebrity details.

Just the right amount of green, flowers, and slope?

Our German friends often complain that Germany is too full of people and does not have wilderness. As we sometimes cycle long distances in apparently empty forests, we wonder what they are talking about. But the situation hit home today, as we looked at the Ischl, an apparently wild mountain river. That's what we saw when we looked right, toward the river. But to the left? it could be a busy road with any manner of retail business. At one point we emerged from the "wilderness" and spied a fruit stand. It was on the other side of a road too busy to cross in the middle, so we cycled to the end of the "block" where there was a light or crosswalk.

The stand had cherries, which we had been thinking about since Susan Carpenter reported finding them ready. Unfortunately all the containers - whether cherries, apricots, or strawberries were too big to take on the bikes. The cherries had come from Sud Tirol, but actually did not look all that sweet. As the season goes on, we'll get our chance!

The mountain river is just to the right of this scene.

Along the route were many cyclists, but not at the same level as near Bodensee. Still, sometimes there were impressive clumps. Looking at the clump in the picture below, they were more scary than impressive. Such serious scowls, and whats with the guy with the yellow hump?!

Another curiosity came when we found a bakery, and I went in to find an anti-bonk for the handlebar bag. My interest was drawn by a nice looking kase tasche, and that's how I asked for it, though some might have said qwark tasche. But I am clearly a foreigner here having been trained in Germany - that sucker was clearly a topfengolatschen. Ok, whatever. It was excellent.

When we arrive near Bad Ischl, we had the choice of going in or passing it by. We chose to go in, mainly because our Anderson/McLeod track showed that they had gone in. Once in the pedestrian zone, I looked for some photo ops, but really did not come up with it. Were we missing something? We repaired to a park where there was a semi-shady bench, and ate our sandwiches. Meanwhile I fired up Anderson and McLeod to see what they had said about the place. What I found was that Anderson was happy he had found the way out on this most recent visit. Other times had been confusing, Scott said. And McLeods, were happy because they found a salad. OK, but Bad Ischl did not seem to have the stuff of legend.

Dodie seemed to engineer our escape quite handily, but here is where our day frankly deteriorated significantly, though buoyed by some of the most wow scenery there is. The problem was that the track from this point basically follows busy roads. Scott had mentioned the first stretch, up to the Traunsee, after which he was impressed with the way the car traffic was directed through new tunnels, while the bikes got the peace and quiet of the old road by the lake. This was true, but relatively short lived, and we found the whole remainder of the trip to be noise on noise rom heavy traffic.

Despite this, the views that opened across the lake were amazing. It was also interesting to know what Scott had seen, and shot, and to at times copy him while at others adding our own unique perspectives.

The first train and car tunnel. Bikes went around to the right.

Fallen rock, guaranteed not to have been documented by Scott.

My copies of Scott's two shots of the church at Traunkirchen - 13 of the way up the lake.

Traunkirchen itself was an interesting spot. Here are are couple of further peeks,

And here we look across the lake to the large mountain on the other side.

Gmunden turned out to be a quite large and old city, big enough to have public transport. We were mainly focussed on finding our apartment, and did not look into all the city might contain.

Gmunden begins with a km long beach front

The apartment was one of those arrangements where you have to somehow contact the owner to get the keys. That implies, of course, a phone that works. I have yet to figure out how my Vodaphone works for outside Germany calling, if it works at all. But fortunately we also have one of those "world" SIM cards, and it seems to work everywhere.

We reached the owner and he explained how to find the apartment in the building, noting that the door was open and the key on the table. About the bikes, we would have to carry them up one story to stash them in a hall. The man said the apartment had a white door and gold handle, but every apartment in the building had the same door and handle? I found an open door leading to a large apartment, with the key on the table. Cool. I began to drag all our stuff up and to dump it in the apartment. I was in mid dump, when a lady with a dog waltzed in and began to make herself at home. Hello? Lady? My apartment, eh!

Some phone calling revealed that our apartment was in fact just down the hall. Also white door, gold handle, key on table. The first apartment was twice the size of ours, but ours was also huge in its own right. No problem.

It's a bit of a tradeoff. An apartment rental almost always produces conveniences like kettle, microwave, fridge, and lots more space. But the lack of a front desk adds the stress of where is the unit, how do you get in, and where do you put the bikes. Now that we have this one figured out, I am enjoying microwaving my coffee, just like at home!

What gave Meaning to Life Today? Tall mountains by alpine lakes.

Today's ride: 65 km (40 miles)
Total: 2,776 km (1,724 miles)

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Scott AndersonFantastic story about the wrong apartment! It reminds me of the night se stayed in a samurai village in Japan, in an era before accurate mapping was available. I created a document with photos of all of our lodgings before leaving home because we knew we wouldn’t be able to locate anything by reading Japanese.

Our traditional inn in this town looked easy to find because the wooden, latticed building looked so distinctive. When we arrived in the small one-street village we were distressed to discover that it looked just like every other structure on the street. No one in the village that we could find spoke any English at all, of course.
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1 year ago

Scott AndersonI’m surprised about your report on the traffic north of Bad Ischl. I remember the road as being fairly quiet, but it was further off peak season then, and tourism was probably still off from Covid.
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1 year ago