VII

Hills are evil.

Today’s travel data:

Date: Tuesday, 19 July

Way: Hallstatt – Bad Ischl, taking the route through Bad Aussee

Distance: 45km

Time: 09:45 – 16:30

Weather: Sunny and comfortable temperatures

After spending a very nice day with the guys, Jessy arrived in the early afternoon. We walked around in Hallstatt, catched a few Pokémon till they left me and Jessy again.

Today we started quite motivated. I thought, it wouldn’t be too much for us, these few kilometres. What I haven’t thought about was the height difference. From Hallstatt to Bad Ischl it would have been no problem, we could have taken the route along the river Traun, but I wanted to try the way through Bad Aussee, because I’m either not very intelligent or I like to suffer.

The first part wasn’t that hard, till we got to a way in the forest; with a gradient of 20%. Needless to say that we had to push our bicycles up the rest of the way. Almost the whole way till Bad Aussee. I think, Jessy hated me already for that, that I took her on such a route on her first day.

But we had nice moments as well. While we made our way up, we met an eldery couple on their way down. They stopped and we talked a bit about our journey. They were already travelling for 3 years through whole Europe by bicycle, and I just thought, that’s my goal!

Fortunately the road we took was in the forest, so we had shadow almost all the way to Bad Aussee, but then it got even better. The road took us up hills and typical Austrian scenery again, but his time in the sun. I’m really sorry, Jessy, that wasn’t exactly a starter route.

At the last crossing we thought we were already on the top, till I saw another road, which was very steep again. It reminded me of the moment before Sankt Leonhard with the crossing on the hill, which I needed to reach. But we got it, after a lot of cursing. And we even got a nice sun tan. Not sun burnt, we have been clever enough to protect ourselves.

After being on the top, it only went down all the way to Bad Ischl. The first part was through a forest again, where we weren’t able to drive very fast due the road conditions, but then we have been quite rapid.

In Bad Ischl we were able to cook dinner and sleep in the flat of Nici, the Couchsurfer host I’ve been already with on my way down to Hallstatt. Funny thing was, we were in her flat but she wasn’t. It was a bit strange but very nice of her to let us sleep there even when she wasn’t there, especially because most of the hostels in Bad Ischl were quite expensive.

We actually planned to go for a walk after dinner, but we went to bed quite soon. Pushing our bicycles uphill in the sun seemed to cost us more power than we actually noticed.

Things we have learned from today?

We both don’t like hills, which isn’t surprising at all. A second water bottle is never a wrong idea. Even if we have to walk almost 80% of the time, somehow it’s still fun.