Journey: Lake Bled, Slovenia to Leogang, Austria
Distance: 261 km
Hotel for the night: Hotel Rupertus
YouTube link: Day 21

We left Lake Bled in the rain and it continued well into Austria. The border between the countries did have a person in a booth but we weren’t stopped at all.

As we drove further into Austria, the mountains got bigger and more dramatic, with more snow showing on the rocky peaks. The tunnels also got more advanced with bends and junctions — before this trip, I hated driving through tunnels, but I have driven so many miles in tunnels in the last few weeks that I don’t even bat an eye now. I caught myself sipping tea driving through one the other day, a far cry from when I used to grip the steering wheel with both hands and stare grimly ahead until we exited.

After a few hours driving, we reached Leogang, a village popular for skiing in the winter and mountain biking in the summer. The surroundings were stunning.

Tonight we’re staying in a hotel — the first of the trip, which is a testament to how comfy Baroness Bertrude is. Hotel Rupertus is a biohotel (all organic) with a big emphasis on vegan food and has a spa. After checking in, we had a cup of tea and helped ourselves to the vegan cookies, which were delightful. We then went for a tootle about Leogang before coming back to the hotel for a swim and sauna. The swimming pool was the best I’ve ever seen; it was both inside and outside, with sliding doors separating the two. So you swam up to the doors, pushed a button to open them and then swam out. It was a little chilly but beautiful to be swimming outside with all the mountains surrounding us. After our swim, we went and warmed up in the sauna.

Later that evening we had the five course tasting menu. The hotel’s ethos meant they had two tasting menus every day, one vegan and one other, so the vegan menu wasn’t an after thought at all. It was all very light and leaning towards healthy, but also incredibly tasty. I even enjoyed the ‘celery essence’ which was a celery consommé with tiny batons of celeriac in it.

While eating we decided that maybe we should cancel the wild spa we’d booked just down the road — the whole reason for coming to Leogang — and stay an extra night at the hotel so we could do some walking and enjoy the spa facilities in the hotel. Unfortunately, the hotel was fully booked the following night and the weather was looking decidedly dicey for walking so that scuppered that idea. We did some more research and found a campsite the other side of the mountains from where we were and found some walks that appealed so thought we could stay there and do a walk the day after the spa given the weather looked a bit better.