Lech is quite a happening place. Lots of festivals, women wearing dirndles and plenty of outdoor bars with views of the mountains and the cable cars/chairlifts. I passed the afternoon before we started by hiking up something high while Sophie came on the train from Cologne.
Friday 3 August
The hike officially starts at Formarinsee; the idea is to take the bus from Lech to the lake and hike back to Lech for the first stage. We decided to hike from Lech to the lake, linger as long as we liked by the lake with no time pressure and then return to Lech by bus. This proved fortuitous as the hike does not officially include the lovely hike around the lake which we were able to enjoy at leisure with a dip in the water too.
We climbed out of Lech, after first going wrong as we had trouble finding the start in town. We were soon to see that the trail is exceedingly well marked with signs and "L" painted on trees. The trail was partly in forest, passing an outdoor swimming pool, and then came out onto the open mountainside. The river was little more than a trickle and we crossed it several times on small bridges. The landscape was beyond pretty but the sun was beating down as we made our way steadily uphill on the earth and rock paths. We were truly in the mountains, hearing the occasional cowbell and seeing no buildings until the lake, and as expected we crossed paths with many hikers going in the opposite direction.
At the lake we elected to go around in a loop which took us past a large walkers' hut high above the lake, a rough track on the way out and a smooth gravel road on the return. The lake was a lovely azure blue in a green hollow. We went down to the edge and sat with our feet in the water, coolish but not freezing with lots of tiny fish.
Saturday
We headed out from Lech again, this time towards Warth. The first part was along the side of a mountain and again hot due to being exposed, but parts of the hike were in forest later on. The tone for the early days was set: cute little villages (all amazingly tidy), expanses of bright green mountainside, cows with large bells (sometimes sitting on the path) and nice wooden bridges. We reached the village of Warth at what was obviously lunchtime for the locals as the metzgerei was jam packed; we continued on as we were put off by the sight of so much meat. Instead we had a modest picnic in the village centre by a very welcome drinking water trough.
Our destination was Lechleiten, a one street village where we stayed in a gästehaus with a great view from the balcony over Warth and the mountains all around us.
Sunday
From Lechleiten we had a similar day walking to Steeg, going through or passing above villages. The river was already quite a bit wider and we remained at around 1400 metres in altitude, often climbing and descending. The villages had pretty churches, sometimes with the typical onion domes and sometimes a simple slender tower. We couldn’t understand how each village looked so pristine.
In Steeg we lingered by the water trough and Sophie picked lots of unripe (I thought) apples. Then we crossed the river and followed it onward. We came to a gorgeous waterfall where we sat for a while and then looked at a small bathing area with strict signs about how to acclimatize to the cold water. We didn’t think it was far to our hotel, but we seemed to be on the wrong bank of the river with no sign of any bridges. So we soldiered on and to our great delight our hotel was just adjacent to the next bridge.
I was so full of beans I went for a short run in the hot afternoon sun to have a look at the next door village of Hägerau. Then we had apfel strudel (Sophie) and topfen strudel (me). It got very windy in the evening and we saw a young deer poking around the cars parked by the roadside.
Monday
We did some extra kilometres today. We walked to Holzgau, another cute village with a lively centre, and then started our ascent to the famous suspension bridge, Austria's highest and longest footbridge. It was an impressive sight looking up at it, but we followed the wrong trail (a trail for walkers with fear of heights) and didn’t reach it. So we had to backtrack to Holzgau and take the correct trail. The bridge certainly felt high as we looked down but we had trouble working out why it was built at all.
The trail continued undulating, much of the time in forest, and we saw several other hikers we had seen on earlier days. There were a few villages before we came down into Bach, like the four house village of Seesumpf with a little chapel. Our nicest stop was at the base of a chairlift (which was actually running). As we were about to leave Bach the heavens opened so we did the obvious, we sheltered in the church.
Then we continued on to Elbigenalp. This was a big village with more than one supermarket and we had to leave the Lechweg to reach our accommodation. We ended up crossing a long meadow mainly populated by very bitey large flies that would not stop attacking us quite painfully.
We stayed at the house of a family where the daughter had won a gold medal at the Calgary Winter Olympics. They had the Olympic rings above the front door. In the evening it rained heavily for a while.
Tuesday
From Elbigenalp we had several more villages. At one point we panicked slightly because it appeared as if we were walking back into Bach, as the church in Häselgehr and its positioning looked so similar to where we had sheltered.
We passed above a succession of villages, in the forest and on farm roads. So many churches. So many perfect houses with flowers on the balcony. So much green grass. Full of weeds, though. We paused to eat lunch at Vorderhornbach, where the main street was being dug up, and then had a problem finding a rubbish bin. Late in the day we almost went wrong when we unintentionally doubled back on ourselves and started going the way we had come.
We ended up in Stanzach. The church is famous but we couldn’t go inside as it was being vacuumed, so we sat outside. We had a balcony at our hotel with a great view, and the main thing was very expansive grassy flat land which did not appear to be being used; it looked very odd, but we decided the sheep that lived there must have been temporarily away.
Wednesday
This was the least enjoyable day by some way. Our walking was virtually all flat and it was warm, even though most of the day was cloudy. We had a little time in forest and long stretches beside the (now very wide) river, with a few bridge crossings, then a lot of time well away from the river. We had a long trek around the perimeter of Weissenbach before being finally allowed into the village centre. We passed a large lake that was very popular.
We came into one village, Reiden, just ahead of a large group of cyclists who parked their bikes in front of someone's garage to go and have lunch; almost instantly the owner needed to drive out so he virtually flung the bikes out of his way.
At one point we saw a light plane shooting rapidly into the air then dropping a parachute but without a passenger. This happened several times. Later we passed the airfield but we were still mystified.
We came to Holz, then walked along a small stream in the forest towards Wängle. Wängle proved to be part of a large conurbation and it was strange to see so many cars and hear so much noise. Our room was right opposite the church; fortunately the church bells didn’t ring between 10pm and 6.30am.
Thursday
The last day was very nice and we saw lots of different things. We climbed to a small chapel in a clearing high above Wängle. Then we came to the smallish Frauensee, a very picturesque alpine lake.
Our next highlight was a bench swing by another small lake. We sat and watched the ducks. Then we climbed in green forest and passed ruins from old fortifications (star-shaped, apparently) where the view over the countryside was extensive, and continued downward into deciduous forest. My phone alerted me that we had crossed into Germany. Eventually we got our first glimpse of the lake Alpsee. We were so excited to also get sightings of the castles of Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein. Our path took us almost around the lake, close to the edge mostly, but we could only see the castles at a big distance.
We crossed into the basin of another lake, Schwansee, and hiked high above it. Reptiles sighted: one long snake and one black frog. We felt we were getting close to our final destination but there were tricks in store. One time we saw a sign that said Füssen 25 minutes, but a while later we saw a sign saying Füssen 50 minutes. With the help of other hikers we worked out that there was a short cut available. However, fear not, we took the longer option with another steepish climb, this time up the Kalvarienberg. At the top was a huge modern shrine (all along the hike there had been small traditional shrines) and then on the way down we passed numerous stations of the cross. Animal sighted: one squirrel. We had a great view over the red rooftops of Füssen.
From here it was a straight shot to the Lechfall, the official end of our hike. The Lechfall was not quite as we expected as it is an artificial waterfall, but the gorge was pretty. We just had one more kilometre to take us into Füssen and the end of the hike, beer and cake.
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