Summary of today: up a mountain and round a lake! This morning's trip out was up a road called the Gerlitzen Alpenstrasse - 12.5km of nearly vertical road with hairpins. It gave great views of "our" lake, the Ossiachersee, and to the mountains all round, including the really high ones in Slovenia (although they were mostly covered in cloud). The weather was much nicer than the photos imply too.

There was a toll booth half way up, so it cost us €8 to teach the top. It was a bit disappointing up there though as most of the summit was taken up by a couple of hotels & a chalet resort, with no access for us punters & therefore no views.....we saw the best of it before the toll gate, but of course you don’t know that  beforehand!

This afternoon saw us on a bike ride round part of our lake - the campsite has a gate out to access the bike paths - bike paths are EVERYwhere here, & are extremely well used. Our path goes round the top of the lake & has info boards at various points, plus an observation tower to view the birdlife. The best view we had of birds wasn’t there though, but almost next to the path where there was a coot sitting on her nest with a couple of young. 

It was only a relatively short ride for my first one in 8 months, but I'm very glad to say my hip/back worked very well - possibly due to the restorative beer we had half way.