Bad Radkersburg to Maribor 40 miles (total miles 259)

This morning our route took us upstream along the flood plain of the river Mura on good empty roads through loads of  farming hamlets and pretty well surfaced forest tracks.  We met another couple of cycle tourists from Lichtenstein who were intrigued to know how we managed to transport our bikes when flying.  The guy was somewhat distraught when I described our poly bag routine as the thought of any scratches on his bike was obviously a fate worse than death.  His wife, on the other hand, thought it was quite a good idea, I think they are going to have some interesting discussions.

After lunch at Spielfield we turned south heading for the Slovenian Border.  This was a bit weird as we ended up cycling along what must once have been the hard shoulder of the main road into Slovenia. It had masses of parking places and dilapidated shops and hotels which must have catered for heavy traffic before the borders were opened up and bypassed by the new Motorway.

Our route for the first part of the afternoon roughly paralleled the motorway on good quiet country farm roads.  The landscape and agriculture of Slovenia is quite different from that a few miles north in Austria.  It is much hillier and instead of the very intensive arable farming there seems to be a lot more pasture which caused a wee bit of alarm when we came across signs which we guess we're saying beware of the coos.

The last 8 miles or so we're not quite so nice as they came in on fairly busy roads into and through Maribor.  There were however basic cycle lanes all the way to our campsite at the foot of the ski slopes to the south of the city.

It is an excellent wee campsite and the warden was really helpful giving us maps and directions for buses back into the city where we had another great local feast.

That is us finished with Austria for this trip but yet again we have been really impressed with how good their cycling infrastructure is, I'm pretty sure we'll be back.

But tomorrow it's off into Slovenia!

Today's route https://www.strava.com/activities/1169457956