Vienna City Walk 8

I completed this roughly 9.5 km walk on the 15th of October 2023. During the week before I had been researching hiking options in Vienna and I found there were a number of walk around the outskirts of Vienna. These walks are called Stadtwanderweg, which means 'city walk', or more precisely 'city hiking trail'. I was quite eager to try out one of these walks as soon as I could; I wanted to see the forested vegitation while the trees still had leaves.

This sign is at the start of the walk. These signs were placed along the trail where there was a divergence to point the way for the Stadtwanderweg 8.

The walk began with a reasonably significant uphill section all on shaded forest paths. As the ground flattened I entered a beautiful clearing pictured above. At this moment I knew this would be an enjoyable walk and my heart filled with excitement to be actually here in Austria, walking through this beautiful scenery.

And here is the guiding sign showing the direction to go. For most of the walk the pathway was quite well defined. There were however some spots in the latter half of the walk where these signs were missing and I had to guess the right way to go, thankfully I didn't get lost.

The image above was the first cross-roads where I could get a good picture of the path and the Stadtwanderweg 8 sign. Not far down the path the landscape truly opened up for the first time. In the picture above you can even see where the trees give way to a bright sky. When I exited the trees I immediately stopped to take a picture and that image became the cover photo for this post.

While hiking in Australia there are times when civilization is truly far away, in Vienna, not so much. At multiple times on the hike I walked passed small clusters of buildings. The first such one I passed had an extensive flower garden nearby.

The walk continued along the top of a few hills and I often had extensive views to my left or my right. I particular like the final picture in the gallery above where the path snakes its way over the hills, following the contours.

While most of the trees were still green, there were patches of autumn colours. In the above picture I tried to capture some of these leaves on a tree next to the path. The leaves are actually really tiny and I just love how they produce a pleasing mess with the leaves in different states of decay.

On this walk I loved how there was, almost constantly, a carpet of leaves on the forest floor. I took so many pictures to try and capture this, many looking either up or down the path. I wanted to capture the mystical feeling I was experiencing of walking on this path through the forest. I narrowed it down to the pictures above, with my favorite one being on the top left. On some parts of the walk I truly felt like these forests could be the home of elves. I am certain forests like this are where Tolkien drew his inspiration from for parts of Middle Earth.

This is the final picture I want to share from this day. More than any other it shows the onset of autumn. I just love how the green tree covered landscape has houses and autumn colours emerging out of it.

Bonus picture, of the sign at the start showing the full map of the walk.

Thanks for reading – Edward

Written 19th of December 2023

Please comment below if you have any questions or want to share which pictures were your favorite.