August 12 –16, 2021

Scheibbs District, Lower Austria, Austria

Margit & Christian

Since the pandemic and particuarly the volatile and fast changing travel restrictions still ruled the European Union we decided still not to travel internationally. But all that Covid madness was a blessing in disguise as we discovered a beautiful roundtrip hike in the hills of the Mostviertel, basically just around the corner, on Margit's beloved home soil. Most of the hilly trek of  the Via Aqua leads along the beautifully turquise and incredibly clean Erlauf river. We started in the village of Gaming, pulled up refreshing local beer from a beer well, climbed the Trefflingfälle to the mountain hut of Hochbärneck, hiked back down to St. Anton/Jeßnitz, Neubruck and Scheibbs, climbing up to the Freithöhe before dropping down again reaching the beautiful village of Purgstall, had a bath in our cold but dear hiking companinon Erlauf river with it's beautiful gorge and after 5 days and just about under 80 kilometers ended up again in Gaming where we had another refreshing beer. This time not from the well but in the village's own brewery. Due to the extreme daily humidity heavy thundersstorms were forecasted each day but each day again we had blue skies and sunny weather. Only when we left for good to go back home in the afternoon of day 5 did the first raindrops drop down on us. And when the heavy rain finally set in we had already arrived back home to enjoy the comfortable properties of our living room couch in lovely RPH!