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Up at 07:20 and into the shower, drying myself with the town that Christopher1 gave me from the “lost and found” pile. I had a chat with the L300 Delica2 owner. He and his wife have had it for nine years, and toured the Alps from north to south and east to west. The van has 332,000km on it.
09:04: €57.80 for two nights, [including] dinner, lunch, snacks, drinks. €30 [of that] was the two-night camping fee.
09:30: Walking out of the campsite. Have to remember I’m going commando today because I dropped my [freshly washed] jocks in a puddle in the shower. They’re drying on my rucksack. Think I’ll smear myself in factor 50. It’s a really hot day. I haven’t checked the forecast for today.
09:46: Gnesau town limit.
10:08: €2.70 for 300g bread, 275g mayo in tube, and an apple. With the fish, that’s lunch.
10:19: Leaving Gnesau.
10:57: Descending. I’ve stayed on the main road. I don’t have the patience to piss about on the little back roads today.
10:59: I’m probably looking at the Julian Alps through the haze. I see nine distinct ridges.
11:03:09
11:05: Feldkirchen 13km.
11:13:25
11:25: Descended through hairpins. Found a discreet laneway where I could put on my almost-dry shorts.
11:30:12
11:51: Feldkirchen 7km.
11:53: Back on the level. Walking into a nice breeze.
11:58: Himmelberg. Stopping for an early lunch at a shaded picnic table on the town outskirts.
12:50: Moving again. Mayo in a tube is a good butter substitute. Lunch was Bauernbrot slices, tinned peppered mackerel fillets, mayo, peanut butter, chocolate, water. Probably 1,000 calories. Not bad at all.
13:03: Climbing.
13:12: Level again (slight inline). Leaving Himmelberg.
13:32: Pichlern.
13:40: Leaving Pichlern.
13:59:26
14:22: Shopping in the Billa supermarket. €3.88 for crisps, oatflakes, mackerel fillets, soap.
14:51: Got a strong urge so popped into the café across the road and ordered a cup of tea while I relieved myself. €2.30.
15:19: €3.30 for a very good yoghurt, mango and lemon ice cream which I ate squatting in the steet. Feldkirchen is a lovely unpretentious little town!
16:02: Oberglan.
16:09:57 
16:24:05 
16:34:36 
16:35:26
16:35: Since turning off the road at Oberglan I’ve been climbing through pine forests and now I’m walking across meadows, wheat and cornfields. The grass is alive with the chirps of grasshoppers.
16:39:04 
17:05:01 
17:05:10 
17:42:49
17:59: Arrived at a camping site, but there doesn’t seem to be a site office!4
18:08: €22 for the campsite! Among the most expensive since Les Andelys.
19:22: Sitting enjoying the evening, catching up on Twitter. Gonna put up the tent now and then have a cold drink.
19:43:14
20:44: I’d planned to have a drink and a quiet read, but Frank and Otto waylaid me on the way into the bar. Two retirement-age ex-restaurantuers, big drinkers both of them, looking massively unhealthy — one enormously fat and pock-marked, the other skinny like an old man, but only 66 years old. Otto, the skinny lad, stood me two drinks, which was appreciated! We chatted about my trip and the beauty of the location. I’m going to retrieve my phone5 now and make my bed.
The manager on duty during my stay.↩
The Mitsubishi Delica is a bit of a cult classic; I owned one myself for a few years. They’re ostensibly people carriers built for the Japanese market, but they’re also exceptionally capable off-road vehicles.↩
…which is a satellite village of Feldkirchen. I didn’t notice that I’d entered the town of Feldkirchen.↩
I walked from one end of the long lakeside campsite to the other, looking for the office. I found it eventually, situated in the lakeside house on the other side of a causeway.↩
Every chance I got, I’d ask café and bar staff to charge my phone behind the bar.↩
