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Friday, August 30th - Villach to St. Lorenzen - 10,202 km
Perhaps I showed my disgruntled side too much yesterday, or perhaps just enough. Mathias is up and ready to roll an hour or so earlier today. We wait for him before we cross the Drau River to buy groceries in Villach. The day is warm and pleasant and much sunnier than the broken cloud we had yesterday. The mountain air is
invigorating. It puts each of us in the best of moods. Even if I was tired I would be energized by the weather and knowing we are climber higher into the mountains. Villach’s setting is nice but it will only get better from here.
Villach in built on the Drau (or Drava) River, just upstream from the confluence with the Gail River. The Drau comes from the north-west and the Gail from the west. It is the Gail we will follow from this point so we cycle 5 km south to get into the entrance of the Gail Valley. 
This is a steep-sided valley and the flat-bottomed floor is about 4 km wide. Gone is the lumpy, undulating plain the Drau has been winding through, and so are the lakes. This is a small river so its valley is narrower and it climbs faster. The road has no choice but to be relatively near the river.
In an hour we have reached the town of Notsch-im-Gaital. By the second hour, we have reached Hermagor. We stop to have make sandwiches for a light lunch here. It is about 2 pm. I ask Mathias how far we will go today and he says we will stop before it gets dark. That satisfies me as I won’t want to miss anything beyond this point.
The valley floor upstream from Hermagor narrows to 2 km but the climb is still gentle. We pedal through the villages of Kirchbach, Reisach and Dellach to get to the town of Kotschach-Mauthen, the last place of any size today. One kilometre west of the town the flat valley floor ends and the road begins a serious climb up the side of a steep V-shaped valley. It has been gentle cycling up to this point, so I don’t mind.
It is 5 pm when we begin this climb. It takes an hour and a quarter to climb the next 15 km to the picturesque village of Lesachtal. Here, the evening is beginning to set in. There is no place to sleep here so we push on three more kilometres to the hamlet of St. Lorenzen. There is nothing here either but farms or ski chalets. We pull into an open-sided hay barn beside the road and decide to call it a day there. I feel a little awkward as we haven’t asked the farmer, but we aren’t sure where the farmhouse is. Mathias and Jochen pitch their tent and I lay out my mat and sleeping bag under the roof of the barn.
It is exhilarating to be making camp outdoors in the mountain air instead of staying indoors. It is far nicer than staying in a youth hostel, even if means no shower tonight. It is the first time on this trip that I have slept outdoors and it feels much freer, much less like being a tourist. I am tired but very happy tonight.
PHOTO 1: Villach
PHOTO 2: Drau River valley in morning
PHOTO 3: Jochen and Mathias
PHOTO 4: Arnoldstein Mountain
PHOTO 5: Jochen
PHOTO 6: the valley closes at Kotschach-Mauthen
PHOTO 7: we begin our climb above the Gail River
PHOTO 8: Lesachtal
PHOTO 9: St Lorenzen at dusk
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