Now things started to return to the bad days at the start of this Summer tour and the end of the tour was not the best of experiences with new problems, but mostly with the weather. This day started with rain and with no hope of any better weather anywhere near where I was going. I just went to the train station in Thusis right away – a good point for staying near a train station is that you can more easily escape somewhere else the next day if the weather is bad where you are. So sort of lucky with being able to get out of Thusis not all soaked and not having planned any nearby climbs for this day. But I had of course planned other climbs for the day and tried to go to the one I was most interested in visiting more to the north in the area.

I took the train via Sargans to Buchs, where it rained even more … . I just about managed to get to a café to dry up and have a cake and coffee to wait out the rain (photo). Eventually I just had to leave. It was still raining, but not as heavily and I continued north and the rain increased and decreased along the way.

Just cannot remember now, but maybe it was to the Löwenburg restaurant (near Lienz) I was taking shelter again later, thought it was placed a bit higher up along an even smaller road, but otherwise it looks a bit similar. Had a sausage and something to drink again, I think. Had to wait a long time again. Then eventually continued to Rühti which was the village I wanted to get to as the start of the climb up the Hoher Kasten starts there. It is a mostly asphalted steep climb to Kamor (1722m). Now I could hardly see anything today so any sort of climbs seemed mostly without merit this day. Anyway I started out on what I thought was the correct road (which it was not) up to Plona, which is only the correct road if you plan to walk up to Hoher Kasten. Hoher Kasten is basically the last very high mountain in the Alps going north here.

In plona I was almost drenched again in the rain and went into a gasthaus there to see if they had lodging for the night. The nice looking Gasthaus Alpenrose had nice owners, but no lodging. Even returned to ask if it was true as I was under the impression then that every Gasthaus offered lodging, but no. So, back down the steep road to Rühti again in the rain. Someone (maybe at the gasthaus) told me the only place for lodging in Rühti would be in a hotel down by the train station. They also told me I could stay there even if it was closed … . All right down I went to the Kamor hotel where a lady eventually opened and told me it was closed but that I could stay if I wanted just as I had heard. Yes, I did not want to continue more this day. Apparently the lady was just overlooking the hotel while the owners were away on holiday (I think). Now there was no dinner to be had here and all looked pretty closed down in Rühti, but had to walk in there to see if I could find something. I borrowed an umbrella (with some logo for Rühti on it) and walked away in the Crocks clogs that I borrowed from my sisters boyfriend as I had forgotten to bring my own Nike light sport shoes with me (only thing I forgot this year). Now these clogs leaked and my feet got all wet.

I managed to find a curious bar (Kreuz bar up on the second floor in a building along the road) in Rühti which was open that basically served beer and was a hangout for local older children watching football. But I got something simple to eat and was happy with that. There were absolutely no place else to go here, even though it looked like there could be. I slept well. Photo here of one of the nice houses in Rühti.