We’ve been to a fair few cities so far on this trip, and we’ll go to many more before we catch our boat home for Christmas. Our route south through Austria could take any direction, but we decided to give Vienna a miss in favour of something a bit more laid back. There are many lovely alpine campsites in the west of the country, but they come with a few disadvantages for us. The first being that they would increase the journey time by several hours, and as we now need to squeeze in a few hours of school time every day we decide to head for the tail end of the alps and a lovely little spot called Putterersee for a few nights.
The drive here is fairly epic as you wind yourself up and down through the mountain roads, across bridges with vistas of the valleys below and through never ending tunnels. The amount of bikers blasting past us makes me pine for my old chop – what better way to enjoy these roads. But alas I can’t fit a family of four on my bike, so the camper van will have to do!
The campsite is right on the shores of Lake Putterersee in the Enns Valley surrounded by mountains on all sides. This is apparently the warmest lake in Styria, and water temperatures can supposedly reach 26 degrees. On our visit it’s a very respectable 21.6 degrees in the water, amazing considering we’re in the Alps. The campsite has its own access to the water if you just want a quick dip, but if you walk or cycle (as we did) round to the other side there is the Putterersee leisure facility. For an entry fee of just 5 euros you can relax on their grassy shores or purpose built decked pontoons overhanging the water and swim at your leisure.
There is also a floating pontoon 20 metres off shore and two diving platforms on the decking at 2 metres and 4 metres in height. We all enjoyed the 2 metre platform (except Kate obviously), but despite many trips to the top and tentatively staring over the edge, none of us could muster the cojones to jump from the top. I don’t know why, but 4 metres looks so much higher from the top than the bottom! The monkey bars over the water were Bam’s favourite. Despite us having reservations about her little arms being able to carry her the full distance, she absolutely surpassed herself by doing it 9 times in total, a feat that i didn’t see any other child come close to equaling all day!
You can also rent some sports equipment here if you get bored of just swimming. We tried out the pedal boat with on-board slide for a bit of swimming in the deepest part of the lake, and a stand up paddle board which Hunter loved. He even managed to persuade Kate to take a quick trip with him despite the distinct risk of falling in and getting her face wet!
Another upside of this place is the pretty decent food and drink offering. We actually had lunch AND dinner here, because Bam loved her lunchtime schnitzel so much she demanded it again at teatime.
After a quick bounce on the raft of coin operated trampolines on offer here as well, we undertook the short bike ride back around the lake to our campsite for the night.
After two nights in Austria we head off south again for the Slovenian border. We had previously been tipped off by a reader of this blog (Tim, that’s you by the way) that if we go to Slovenia we should check out Lake Bled. However we haven’t booked ahead, and despite the fact we’re already well into September it appears that all the campsites surrounding this lake are completely rammed to the rafters. So instead we head for the Upper Savinja Valley and Camp Menina.
This family run campsite is set in a beautiful wooded area with a small tributary of the Savinja river running through the camp which creates a swimming lake in the middle. We have visited off season and the place is quiet, but you can really get a feel of what a brilliant place this would be to bring kids at the height of summer. On top of the swimming lake with rope swing and jumping platform, they also have a huge treetop assault course with endless zip-lines (which they let us all use for free as the cash desk had already closed!). There is also mini golf, pedal go-karts, SUP boards and organised fishing and rafting trips. There is even the possibility of having on-site massages if you’ve really hammered the activities with the kids all day! At night there is a great bar and restaurant on site, and we were lucky enough to come across the owner, Jure, propping up the bar. He immediately recognised we were English, and excitedly told me he had recently been on a cider tasting tour of Somerset. My revealing that I was actually born in Somerset really peaked his interest and he insisted I try his special home made cider which he produces and kegs himself on site, and sells to his punters. Fair play to Jure, this was a proper scrumpy tasting, crisp drop of dry cider but with a decent bit of fizz, good effort!
Rosy cheeked I bid our new friend goodnight as we still have some home schooling left over from the morning, and cider and education probably don’t mix too well (probably).
It’s a shame we don’t have a bit more time to spend here, but I would definitely consider bringing the kids back here for a week sometime for some summer sun. And if you contact them ahead of time they’ll even come and pick you up from Ljubljana airport, cracking!