The second day of the trail was very different from the first. Yesterday we walked down from the high, rocky alpine landscape, then descended into the forest. Today was mainly in the level beneath the forest, of pasture, following the Moll valley, parallel, but high above, the main road, walking between farms.
The first hour or so was mainly up, and for longer than I expected, annoyingly because of a quite lengthy detour uphill caused by a collapsed footbridge over a river gorge. I stopped to ask the way of a farm worker, and with a few words of English and German common to us both, plus some finger pointing, I managed to gather which way I had to go.
After that, much of the day consisted of easy walking along farm roads, and narrow connecting footpaths along the tops of pastures and through little woods. The ups and downs, apart from at the beginning and end, were mainly short, but no sooner did you go up, than you came down again. It was a bit like walking a coastal path.
There were big wide views across the valley to the tall, three part cascades of the Jungfernsprung waterfall, back to Heiligenblut, and forward along the valley. The farms seemed close together, so were probably small, and although I saw some goats and geese, there were no encounters with cows today.
Notable features included a couple of waterwheels; and numerous examples of drying racks, used to draw grass for winter straw for animal feed.
Yesterday we’d been told by our taxi driver that very few, maybe 5%, of walkers on the trail hiked the while route in one go, with most spending a week or two each year to complete it. We did however meet one young woman who was backpacking the whole route. But today I saw only one other pair of walkers, and have no idea whether they were walking the whole route or not. With peak holiday season yet to start, the hotels, towns and paths are still quite quiet at the moment.
Largely the weather behaved. Although I had my first bit of light rain on the trail today, mostly it was warm and sunny. The heavy rain only arrived after I’d already got to the hotel in Dollach, and popped out to meet Jeni and Rachel who’d just arrived by bus.
Because of the diversion, the total distance today clocked up as 13.9 km (8.7 miles), a couple of km longer than expected, but still short, and with only 510 metres of ascent, it was, as expected, an easy walk, and I was finished in around 4.5 hours, only a little longer than suggested in the guide book.
Tomorrow, after a final meal together, Jeni and Rachel are off to Salzburg for a few days, and I’ll be on my own until Jeni returns for the end of my journey, in another five weeks or so.
Across the Alps to the Adriatic 