3rd Stage from Bad Gastein to Villach

Today began with an extreme climb up to Bad Gastein. It was quite tough. However, in the town, we had a wonderful view of the waterfall. After more climbs, we headed to the Stubnerkogel cable car base station. It costs a small fortune for a mountain ride, but since we were there... Luckily, there weren't many visitors at the top yet. We even saw two marmots playing. We had never experienced that in the wild before. A beautiful Alpine panorama could be seen from up there. The Grossglockner and Dachstein were also visible in the distance. After crossing the freely suspended bridge over the gorge, we headed back down.

We continued the journey to the train station for the Alpine crossing by train to Mallnitz. We were fortunate to be able to load our bikes immediately. In 20 minutes, you reach the other side. Now we had arrived in Carinthia. After a few kilometers, a truly spectacular descent into the Mölltal followed. I reached more than 60 km/h on the speedometer. That was really fun.

We then continued through the Mölltal and soon along the Drau River towards Villach. The last kilometers were not easy for us. We were relieved to have completed our longest stage of more than 90 km.