The night in Velden was rather fitful because there were quite some people coming late at night into the guesthouse and not caring for other people sleeping. 😒
At least breakfast was nice and more than enough with a wide range of bread. At 8.15 a.m. we started today’s stage which was said to be a rather boring one.
And in fact, it was. At first there were about 3km through Velden on asphalt road which was really awful. It was already very hot and I didn’t like it a bit in the town. Velden in the evening while sitting at the lake with icecream is nice but I don’t find the daylight Velden charming.
So I was really happy to leave it behind. After the 3km we had quite a long way through the forest which was pleasantly cool, quiet and comfortable to hike. After one hour we arrived at the Drau where we walked alongside the Drau Radweg for 2km.
It was ok to walk but not really exciting. After all we’ve seen by now, all the gorgeous mountains, the great views etc this part was simply uninspiring. After leaving the Drau we crossed a bridge and headed through a small village. Afterwards the way led for 400m along a very frequented road. The only nice spot was after leaving this road and heading up to a Marterl with a nice view down to the Faaker See:
We stopped there for a break and Felix headed to a supermarket not far away in Egg to get our usual smoothie drinks for pepping up our water bottles (only water on the way gets boring with time) and other stuff like Ben & Jerry’s icecream for me. 😁
Then we hiked on a boardwalk near the Faaker See passing some beaches from local hotels and guesthouses from Drobollach. It was ok but we wanted so much more to jump into the lake rather than pass by. 😉
After another 20-30 minutes around the lake we had another nice path through the forest with quite some people running or riding their bikes. Meanwhile it looked already like rain.
After leaving the forest we had to walk 30 minutes on asphalt again before we arrived at our accomodation, the Gasthaus Lutschounig. As soon as we were inside it rained quite a bit for 10 minutes, there was a little thunder, and suddenly the weather got better.
So, after a long and boring hike we decided to go swimming. The guesthouse had its own bathing beach at the Faaker See and so we headed off to find it.
It wasn’t very near and we walked at least 1,5km. But it was so worth it! The lake was so great to cool off and we enjoyed swimming there a lot! The only other guests was a family from Germany with a rather talkative but funny son who told us nearly everything about his family and himself in no time. 😉
Later we went to the restaurant Kärntnerhof to get something to eat. It was definitely not cheap but very good and a lot!
Since there’s nearly nothing else to do in Faak we went back to our room and slept 1,5 hours because we were so tired after the heat today.
Overall, the Faaker See is great but Faak itself awfully boring.
Some figures for today (not including walking to the lake and back):
- 19,6km
- 400m up
- 315m down
- Hiking time: 3h 26m