Day 8 – Along The Valley To Monguelfo

Jan 21, 2024

Today’s Adventure

After a couple of very challenging days Cindy and I decided to take it a bit easier for Day 8. We finished a relaxed breakfast and left our apartment around 10:00 AM to catch the next train headed west. We arrived in Niederdorf after an exhausting 9 minute ride 🙂 and headed across town to find our trailhead.

Our trail for the day was the Moosweg, a winter trail connecting Niederdorf (‘Villabassa’ in Italian) to Welsberg (‘Monguelfo’ in Italian). Welsberg is the next stop west on the rail line from Niederdorf. The trail, like yesterday’s in Badia, linked together a variety of roads and paths in order to get us from point A to point B. We saw everything from sidewalks and dry single lane pavement to packed snow paths that obviously followed seasonal farm roads.

Once we had climbed the tall ridge the Moosweg offered lovely views of the Val Pusteria east towards Niederdorf, west towards Welsberg, and south into the Val di Braies. The latter is home of the all-too-famous Lago di Braies, a spectacularly beautiful alpine lake that has been ravaged by Instagram and other excess social media pressure in recent years.

Given that today is Sunday it’s only appropriate that we passed by a number of churches, chapels, and personal shrines along the trail. The churches included the Chiesa Parocchiale and Chiesa Santa Maddalena in Niederdorf as well as the Chiesa di Santa Maria and Chiesa Madre di Santa Margherita in Welsberg. There was a beautiful chapel standing proud in a field midway between the two towns as well as a couple of family chapels on small remote farms.

There was an amusing moment when we came upon another couple headed towards us on the trail. She was riding a horse and he was walking a pair of what looked like Shetland ponies. The one pony got away from the husband and headed down the trail towards us so I got to play cowboy and round up the runaway. Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. The fact is that when the pony got to me it flopped down on the ground asking to be skritched! 🙂

The main indicator that we were finally approaching our lunch destination was sighting the Monguelfo Castle through the woods. This castle, known as ‘Schloss Welsperg’ in German and ‘Castel Monguelfo’ in Italian, has sections dating back to 1126 AD. The structure has been largely restored and is currently used as an events center. Sadly the castle is closed for the winter so we could not tour it today.

When we reached the main square in Welsberg we quickly spotted Gabi’s Pizza Restaurant, Cindy’s choice for lunch based on her web research the night before. I ordered the Quattro Stagioni pizza with tomato sauce, mozzarella, ham, mushrooms, white asparagus, artichokes. Cindy ordered the Capricciosa, which was the same as mine except with oregano and without the white asparagus.

After finishing our lunch and painlessly settling the tab with Apple Pay (as usual) we headed off for the train station and caught the 14:52 for Lienz. This put us back in San Candido just 17 minutes later. Even though this was supposed to be an ‘off’ day we still ended up walking about 8 miles with 1,309 feet of vertical. Now we need to figure out tomorrow!

For Innichen’s main page click here.

For Seefeld’s main page click here.

For the entire trip’s main page click here.