Waylaid Around Wolfgangsee

Wolfgansee is a beautiful lake, surrounded by huge mountains, situated in the Salzkammergut resort area, and only about 25 miles from Salzburg. People flock here to participate in the many outdoor sports on offeras well as just chill out in a remarkable landscape.

We stayed for the past three nights at Camping Wolfgangsee, on the shore of the lake and midway between the picture perfect towns of St Gilgen and Strobl located at each end of the lake. It’s an excellent campsite with very friendly owners and at 28€ per night, not bad value for money given the amazing location.

After getting a glimpse of the area during the Sound of Music Tour, we really had to come back to explore a little further. Luke Rowe rides for the Team Ineos cycling team and has raced all over Europe as well as other parts of the world. He describes Austria as the most beautiful country he has ever raced in from what we’ve seen so far it’s difficult to disagree with him.

Because it was such a spur of the moment thing, we had no idea what the immediate area had to offer. The first thing we discovered was a passenger ferry from the campsite to St Wolfgang directly across the lake. You have to press a bell to summon the ferry, which we did, and within minutes we were in St Wolfgang.

Not far from the ferry we discovered the Shafberg Bahn which turns out to be Austria’s steepest cogwheel railway. It takes about 35 minutes to reach the top of the Shafberg, so after only just over an hour of leaving the Silver Machine we were on the other side of the lake and almost at 6000ft on top of an Austrian mountain. We were wearing only shorts and tee shirts and Christine had on sandals, whilst our fellow passengers had on walking shoes and were dipping into their rucksacks to pull out wind proofs and hats. It was a bit cool right enough but probably not much cooler than a breezy summers day in Insch.

Anyway, the journey up was brilliant, with amazing and ever changing views as the train twisted its way up the very steep slopes. You’re supposed to be able to see eleven lakes from the top, but we could only spot five before sadly the clouds started to roll in and totally obscure our view.

Back down at the bottom, St Wolfgang turned out to be a lovely town almost entirely designed to cater for the many tourists it attracts. It occurred to us that the the Saltzkammergit resort area is very similar to in some ways to the Lake District except the mountains are bigger, the towns prettier, the buildings better maintained and the streets are cleaner. Everything looks perfect. Sorry Lake District.

The area really promotes cycling and there are a lot of on and off road cycle routes published in an excellent booklet which the campsite owner gave us when we arrived. We only had time to do one, the Three Lakes, a 40 mile circuit which was a mix of bike paths and mostly quiet roads.

One spectacular section followed a river on a track through on a decent to Bad Ischl. Another section at the south end of Mondsee went through a long tunnel especially built for cycling. As regular intervals the side of the tunnel was cut away to allow light in and reveal amazing views of Mondsee.

Tonight the Silver Machine is parked up at Camping Seehof on the outskirts of Villach, only about 30 minutes drive from the Italian border. We’re on our way to Trieste and this is just over halfway there from Wolfgangsee. It’s actually a lovely campsite, with very friendly owners and the most modern facilities all for £28.

To get here we drove 150 miles, which took almost four hours, to make up some time after our rewarding detour. It was a really spectacular drive all the way here, the road winding its way though the mountains and over high mountain passes. For one 22 mile section following the Malta river, the drive became quite “interesting” as the winding road had to narrow considerably as the slopes of the steep Rocky Mountainsides practically came together.

We were able to sit down the other day to plan out the next couple of weeks. From Trieste we go directly to Croatia, via Slovenia, and we’ll then have just about a fortnight there before we need to start heading home. We won’t reach Dubrovnik by any stretch of the imagination but at least we’ll have achieved our goal in part.