At 6am in the morning we started from Obertrum headed to St. Michael im Lungau, in order to test our cycling tour along Mur Cycle Path there. Since I have been looking after this Eurobike tour for the third year now, I really wanted to experience it up close and personal. I was accompanied by my dear colleague Sabine. Unfortunately we do not have enough time to cycle the entire tour, so we compiled a small special program, since Eurobike is quite flexible. :-)
Once we arrived in St. Michael we went straight away to our accommodation the hotel ‚Wastlwirt‘, where we book category A for our guests. As soon as I walked through the door I was already greeted with ‚Hello Angelika‘, despite the fact that we had never met before. Naturally I was very pleased with this warm welcome. After a really delicious breakfast the owner personally showed us around the beautiful hotel.
Then a quick visit to our colleaguest to say hello there. They organises the luggage transfer and the return transfer for tours along the river Mur.
After that we embarked on our cycling adventure ‚Tour de Mur‘. Hotel Stofflerwirt is located slightly outside of town but directly on the river Mur, so we had to pop in there for a quick visit too. Here we book category B for our guests.
We kept cycling along the Mur all the way to Tamsweg. A lovely little village, which is definitely worth a little stopover. The ‚Bacher‘-girls recommended Café Mädls Hochleitner, so we decided to have our first break there. But since there were dark clouds on the horizon we were back en route relatively quickly. As soon as we started cycling the rain caught up with us and all we could think about was to get to Murau as quickly as possible.
Here we spent the night in Hotel Lercher. After a short warming-up session in the sauna we enjoyed a delicious 3-course meal. We let the evening end at the bar together with Mrs Lercher, Fritz and Moniomi.
The morning started well with nice weather and a delicious brekfast. At 9am we were already on our bikes and we cycled between mountains and lots of nature on hilly terrain along the river Mur. Along this route you get to see lots of castles and castle ruins and we often stopped to take some pictures.
We had lunch in St. Georgen in the inn ‚Märchenwald/Gasthof Sonnenhof‘. There we enjoyed a super delicious pizza baked in a stone oven. There is a lot on offer for families with children and it is also a place to maybe take a longer break. All invigorated we continued towards Judenburg.
We had booked a hotel for tonight in Fohnsdorf (B&B Karl August), which is approx. 8km away from Judenburg situated in a little village. Rooms were very spacious and all quite new, since the house has only been built in 2014. Since they only offer breakfast there, we needed to venture out for dinner approx. 2km into the neighbouring village.
We decided to walk there, since we spent all day in the saddle anyway. The resaurant appeared very plain from the outside, but the food was excellent. We really needed that after-dinner walk back.
Breakfast in the sun, what better start to a cycling tour can you have! We have seldom come across such a charming, small but exquisite breakfast buffet as this hotel offers here. Since we had to cut the tour short, we took a ride with the luggage driver today and covered the initial stage until Bruck/Oberaich that way. In Bruck/Oberaich we checked out our hotels (Gasthof Pichler and Hotel Landskron) and then we were headed towards Graz. Since we had plenty of time left, we really wanted to visit Graz.
We cycled past blooming meadows and forests. There were fewer and fewer hills the closer we got towards Graz. Today’s stopover happened in Frohnleiten. This is a tiny but lovely place with a beautiful town square, nice cafés and gorgeous restaurants.
Our hotel today ‚Hotel Weitzer‘ was easy to find, since it was located directly on the cycling path. After we had locked our bikes, we were off on a stroll through the city. Unfortunately, the path to the belfry was closed due to severe weather a few days before. We walked through the city for a while, checked out a couple of shops and finally ended up in a cute, little café ‚Graf Leopold‘.
Dinner today was in the restaurant ‚Der Steirer‘ (The Styrian). We both went for beef filet with pasta and for desert we enjoyed apple strudel. You get given a dinner-voucher for this restaurant by Hotel Weitzer, if you have booked half board there. After dinner we walked back into the city and since we really liked in the pub ‚Graf Leopold‘ we remained there for the rest of the evening.
Today we planned on leaving very early. We had breakfast at 7.30am and 40 minutes later we were cycling. The cycling path now runs on very level terrain across the Mur-pastures, past pumpkin fields and lovely little villages with plenty of lunch options for cyclists. Just before Mureck we decided to take another little break and went for the ‚MU HÜ Murhütte‘. There we enjoyed the best cappuccino of the entire tour! From here it was a mere 3km to the B&B ‚Steirerland‘.
There we were cordially welcomed by the manager Mansuet Troicher. Mansuet has worked together with Eurobike for 25 years. Our tour ended here and so the first thing we did was enjoy a nice glass of wine to toast the wonderful days we had experienced. After that we paid a quick visit to the sight ‚Murecker Schiffsmühle‘.
Since Mansuet is renowned for his culinary skills, we were really looking forward to this evening. We were definitely not disappointed. The B&B is only graded with 3***, but the food deserves at least 5*****. We enjoyed delicious Styrian specialities.
