Our last day in Austria may have been also our most interesting.

We arrived in Villach, tired after 11 days straight on the bike (10 of them camping). We got in early, but ended up spending a few hours in town sorting out some things, like sourcing camping gas, which meant it was around 6pm before we started heading for camp.

My map said it was only 2 kms to the campsite, so we weren’t particularly worried about the time. It didn’t say, however that the 2 kms would be straight uphill into the forest. By the time we reached the camp site, we were buggered and I thought Alli was ready to break down.

There was no obvious place to check in, with the only building a colourfully decorated bar. I didn’t really pay any attention to the outside, but thought it was odd that there was a sign saying over 18s only. As I approached the bar, I began to notice the phallic devices, mood lighting and sex-related and pornographic paraphernalia… I’m still not sure what it was (maybe a wanna-be swingers club?)…

Despite the open sign it was totally empty and I couldn’t rouse anyone, so we decided to go into the camp site anyhow, as we were way too tired to move on. We got the feeling the campsite was closed for the year, as there we were the only ones in the ten acre site.

It was a beautiful spot and one of the better camps we’ve found… unfortunately we were roused early the next morning by a very cranky owner, who had decided we were trying to rip him off. I went back to the empty bar to pay the guy (30 euros!!!), and noticed he had CCT cameras everywhere linked up to a monitor on his desk.

He opened the showers for us, but it felt way too weird to use them… Not surprisingly, we didn’t hang around particularly long in the morning.