Summary: the third long day proves almost too much for our intrepid young hikers! And we meet Lidia (and Andreas)! And it's Lidia's birthday! And I can use exclamation points!
Beautiful landscapes, as almost always along the HxH, fine weather once more, more horses, well, ponies, more mountain-bikers (although less than the previous day): good times. Not quite as long as the previous day (24km instead of 26km), but much more downhill (about 1500m)... which was almost too much for the increasingly sore and tired legs of our no longer quite so fresh young hikers :-).
At some point I pointed out that if this had been the H2H, we would now be saying "Only 88 days of hiking still to go!"... which deeply impressed Madi and David. Frankly, it deeply impressed me too ;-).
About 100m (vertical) before our final low pass (a mere 2300m) Madeleine had fallen back quite a way, and we waited for her to catch up: her back was starting to hurt, so David offered to take her backpack (along with his). A true friend! He then carried it all the rest of the way... up to the pass, and then the 1150m downhill to our hotel in Taufers, where he collapsed to the ground in the entrance hallway.
After 23 hours and 70km of hiking over the past three days, we were all (more than) a little tired. However, the next day another long hike was planned, before two rest days at the charming spa-hotel Glieshof... what to do? A quick call to the weather gods and all was solved: rain was arranged for the whole day... so that was that. :-)
Lidia and Andreas were there when we arrived, having driven down by car from Bavaria during the day, so we even had transportation for the upcoming rainy day. And somehow the hotel knew that it was Lidia's birthday and had prepared a cake for dinner... so once again, all was well on the H3H!
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