Richard stays on this Whit Sunday in our cottage with a view of the mountain, nice and quiet and of course checking the route and booking overnight stays. With Daan and Sanne we drive in about twenty minutes to Sankt Andrä where the tree bike is next to the church. We get on the bike and ride through the gently rolling broad valley with higher mountains on both sides. The weather is pleasant and the traffic very quiet on this Sunday. Thus the tree bike floats through the landscape, up and down, vice-versa. Daan follows with the car. We arrive in St. Paul-Lavanttal where we set up a tree by the town hall and take pictures. While changing the battery a car stops and two young men enthusiastically tell us that they recognize us from television. Nice anyway. Along the way many pictures are taken from the passing cars. I am very curious what they do with those pictures. Half an hour later we still go up steeply, until we come to a halt with a beautiful view because it gets too steep, at least fifteen percent I estimate. Daan gives the tree bike a “tow” and so we get to the top, but even for Sanne with the regular bike it is very tough. We have a cup of coffee at Gasthof Kropf, which is packed with people dining on this Sunday afternoon. The host is very enthusiastic about the tree bike and takes pictures. We hand out flyers and move on. The silhouettes of the mountains on the horizon are impressive. The weather changes a lot, when the sun is gone it immediately becomes ten degrees cooler with more wind. At a traffic circle I turn a few laps of which Sanne makes a timelapse, keep playing. Then we also put a tree at the entrance to the town hall in Sittersdorf, with a leaflet of course. Still a nice present when you open the door of the town hall on Tuesday. We cross a bridge with high fences on both sides, probably because the river we are crossing is about a hundred meters lower. Gradually we then climb up, the last ten kilometers to Bad Eisenkappel along the winding main road are very beautiful but also dangerous with the sharp turns and speeding cars. It is a good four o’clock when we get there. Fifty-five kilometers on the counter today. We park the tree bike with the trailer after consulting with the lady from the café next to the church and drive back to our overnight location, still twenty minutes away. Richard has been preparing final bookings and itinerary for the next few days, the last week of the first half of our tour. We spend quite some time updating socials, finances and emails. Everyone knows what needs to be done. What a team. Very nice. Tomorrow we head over the mountain into Slovenia. The sixth country of our tour. It’s hard to give an overview of our first eight weeks, I hope to think about that a little more in the next week. And perhaps draw conclusions as to what we can do better in the second half. The mountain is still there. We’ll go over that tomorrow. Pretty exciting every time. Off to bed on time. On to Slovenia.