Despite all the bad reviews of the hotel and restaurant on Google maps, we had a really nice meal last night.
It rained heavily overnight. That seems to have cleared the air, for the forecast for today was now dry, sunny weather. In the morning, the valley below us was full of cloud. We started on the trail down, initially on gravel paths alongside the ski runs, but then off into the forest. This made for slow progress, as every tree root, and every stone, was very slippy. We assumed we would have views of the lake, but all we could see were trees. The path would be reasonably wide, but then there would then be a section where it narrowed and dropped down through the trees before paralleling the hillside again. This repeated several times as we gradually descended.
I spotted a fire salamander on the track, we then saw another four in about 400m. They were all climbing uphill for some unknown reason. Not only was the path slippy, but other parts were very boggy with standing water. We dropped down into the cloud as it was beginning to burn off, and finally got our first view of the lake. The low cloud was now gone and the day warmed up a lot. We reached the lake at Steindorf and decided to wait for the ferry to Ossiach, rather than walking the final 5kms around the lake to the southern side. We were looking forward to an ice-cream or cake, but Steindorf has nothing, all the shops are 5 minutes drive along the lake in the next, bigger, town. We found a bench by the pier and removed our socks and boots to allow them to dry in the now very warm sunshine. It’s a 2 hour wait for the ferry, so it’s nice and relaxing. The ferry took 15 minutes and when we arrived in Ossiach we walked on to the stage end, about 400m. There were two busloads of people walking towards us, all going to look at the abbey. We checked into our hotel, and when we came back out it was a bit different – no people. The supermarket opens from October to March, the pizzeria re-opens in May 2024, all the hotels, apart from our hotel and another, were closed. The other hotel had a restaurant that was open, where we ate this evening. It was busy, presumably because there is nowhere else to eat, though we were not sure where all the people had come from; the car parking was busy.
I have just Googled fire salamanders. Seems best if you don’t lick them!
When I went to visit Corsica where Doreen and Archie were spending the winter on their boat, I arrived about this time of year. We hired a car to do a tour of the island. ‘There’s no need to book ahead’ they said, ‘There’ll be plenty of hotels and restaurants open.’ This wasn’t the case…… Afterwards, they discovered that lots of restaurants and hotels closed for six months over the winter as that way, the owners received benefits. The following year Easter was early so counting six months back…………