Cycling tours around Graz: Schöckl, Semriach and surroundings

The Lur witch looks down on us rather sullenly. No wonder. "Cocoa ceremony; the last ones didn't come out until well after midnight," recounts Andreas Schinnerl, a cave guide in the fifth generation, about the meditative goings-on of the previous night.
The witch is probably simply in need of a bit of sleep. And the fact that Andreas, to draw our attention to her, skims the grimly jutting chin and long nose with the beam of his flashlight, even shining straight into her deep-set eyes, probably doesn't help.
The gentleman to her right, by contrast, seems fairly stoic. With his gaze humbly lowered, his head bowed, and blessed with a mane of curls that could just as well be a crown of thorns, he has something of that Jewish itinerant preacher whom Pontius Pilate once had nailed to the cross.

Leaving the snarling hag and the Christ lookalike behind us, we continue up the steps of the Bärengrotte (Bear Grotto) until we reach a fork. To the right it continues to the large dome; we'll return later from the left.
Humidity: 97 percent, temperature: not even ten degrees. That outside the last days of the calendar summer are living up to their name is not noticeable down here beneath 50 to 120 meters of rock cover.
We are in the Lurgrotte Semriach, about 25 kilometres north of Graz, part of the Experience Region Graz. Between us and the Styrian state capital there really is only the Schöckl. And this beautiful underground dripstone landscape that the groundwater and the Lurbach have conjured in the cave-rich karst of the Tanneben.

Completely different, yet no less captivating, the Schöckl limestone presents itself to us a little later on what feels like the other side of the world, at the surface of the Graz highlands.
Velvety green meadows blanket the gently rolling hills, deep-green forests adorn the slopes of the steeper flanks. The first yellow leaves and red vines promisingly speckle the idyllic scene, and mottled cows graze contentedly as autumn approaches.
That the Styrian state capital, with its busy bustle, lively cultural life and the corresponding volume of traffic, lies only ten, twenty minutes away by car: one can hardly believe it when cycling over the foothills and along the north and south slopes of the Schöckl on lonely roads, letting the view sweep across the charming villages, lush orchard meadows, rural farm structures and distant mountains.

Directly from the cave entrance we set off on the first day, after the frosty march through the earth’s interior glad for the late‑summer warmth and the initial climb up to Semriach. A good 30 kilometres and 700 metres of ascent should suffice after the arrival and cave visit.
Hardly have we passed the town centre with its pretty main square, where a little stop for coffee, ice cream or doughnuts is definitely recommended on our return, when childhood memories awaken: As back then, Piet Hoyos still invites visitors at the eastern edge of town to his traditional Icelandic horse farm, to revel in earthly happiness on the friendly, shaggy five‑gaited horses.

The only thing that's virtually non-existent up here are motor vehicles. Probably one reason why we are by no means the only cyclists making use of the sunny afternoon for a spin through the Graz hills. Especially on road bikes we keep meeting solo riders, pairs and even whole groups.
From the Jägerwirt we drop about 100 vertical metres, Schöckl always at our back, continuing through pretty villages, mown meadows and ruminating grazing cattle to left and right. At times you feel like you're on a high plateau, like an alpine pasture or at least in a mountain-farming area; then the hamlets — and repeatedly the view toward Semriach — show that there's clearly life beyond just cattle and farming.
Rechbergdorf marks the point where we once again change both our heading and our speed. Heading southwest we pedal briskly down into the valley of the Lurbach, fed here by numerous other streams, and then only a short climb around the Eichberg.

Speaking of the Lurbach: it by no means, as the Styrian dialect once implied, disappears shortly after entering the cave — "verloren, verlorn, verlurn". Rather, it vanishes for about 72 hours into the depths of the Tanneben, only to surface again at the other end of the grotto, near the Peggau entrance, at the Hammerbach spring.
In contrast, during high water the stream takes a different, far faster route and needs only 12 hours to rush through the karst massif. It shows no regard for man-made structures: for example, during the 1975 hundred-year flood not only were the Schinnerls' bar and cashier's room flooded up to the ceiling. The roaring elemental force also swept away all the paths that until then had enabled guided crossings of the dripstone cave to Peggau and back.

Much more tranquil than the scene on the second day of our Graz weekend in that July fifty years ago: early on the sun is already warming us as we gather our things in the car park of the Schöckl cable car in St. Radegund. A look toward the sky and the weather forecast shows no sign of rain, and the result of our route planning the evening before promises a varied mix of a punchy climb to the summit and a fast-rolling exploration of the countryside between Schöckl and Graz.

Accompanied by the best wishes of our friendly hosts, after a fine breakfast at the Semriacherhof we packed our bags and rode around the Kalkstock to the other, the Schöckl’s true home side.

The state capital is only a stone's throw away from here, and we've long known this place, this slope as the start/finish area or playground of the Schöckl Trail Area, the venue of many a legendary downhill race and also a training ground for bike-handling coaching and freeride camps.
A "motor skills park for everyone" explicitly offers people in wheelchairs suitable training stations at the mountain station of the cable car that runs year-round, and anyone who doesn't want to go down by MTB, on foot or by gondola can alternatively take the summer toboggan run called the "Hexenexpress".

Admittedly: not as calming as watching stalactites grow. After all, the stalactites and stalagmites of the Lurgrotte increase by only about the size of a pinhead (!) each year.
Aware of that, there is nothing more impressive than standing in front of the so‑called “Giant.” This 40‑ton colossus is 13 metres high and measures nine metres in circumference. It is therefore considered the largest free‑hanging dripstone in the world. You couldn’t illustrate the span of millions of years and the comparatively insignificant, hardly more than a blink‑long existence of humans in that play any more clearly.

If, on our second cycling lap, we were also to move only by the size of a pinhead per hour, for example, we probably wouldn’t make it back in this life. After all, our personal mix of Summit Assault and a shortened Schöcklland Tour with Panorama Tour insertions adds up to roughly 50 kilometres and 1,400 metres of elevation gain.
Thanks to narrow tyres, sporty gearing and slim handlebars, however, we cover ground considerably faster — even when we switch from the still fairly gentle Ehrenfelsstraße onto the gravel Waldtoniweg and thus into true hill‑climb mode to conquer the alpine excursion destination popular with the people of Graz.

To what extent the Schöckl Gipfelsturm, which is well known to also be part of the marathon series Mountainbike Challenge, is actually suitable for gravel bikes was something we had doubted beforehand. After all, the way up rattles quite a bit—especially in the middle section—which, at the latest on the way down, can become anything from exciting to tedious for rider and equipment.
And indeed, where Magna's legendary test track for the Mercedes G-Class runs, more than a few drops of sweat are shed uphill, while downhill wrists and tyres urge a forward-thinking choice of lines. But the fantastic view makes up for a lot, and as if to make amends there's also another stretch of smooth, equipment-friendly asphalt halfway through.

We're not quite so lucky with the long-distance view, but we're much luckier in our choice of rest stop: the Halterhütte wins out among the many dedicated refreshment spots around the summit thanks to its rustic charm and its slightly more secluded location. And the hosts reward us with the finest mushroom goulash, Kaiserschmarrn, sheet cake and cheese bread.

The inhabitants of the Lurgrotte are far less demanding. The spores and seeds brought in by the stream need only the minimal gleam of light that filters into the underground cosmos during the guided tours to start to green and sprout. The hundreds of bats that hang out inside the cave from November to March hibernate, so strictly speaking they need nothing but air and quiet. And even the huge cave bears, whose bones and teeth were found in the grotto, fed only on plants. Mind you: these Ice Age mega-teddies never actually lived in the Lurgrotte, which would have been too small for them. Rather, the water carried their mortal remains into the cave.

We learn all this and more during the roughly seventy-minute group tour that the Schinnerl family regularly offers in the Lurgrotte Semriach, and which operations manager Andreas fills with an entertaining mix of natural history, little jokes and a palpable enthusiasm for "his" cave.
There is much more to discover beyond that. On roughly four-hour adventure tours, which also include crawling sections, you can, for example, get as far as about the middle of the underground passages. If you want to give children a special experience, you can send them on a treasure hunt into the heart of the mountain.

Meanwhile we tack on another above-ground outing and, after the summit assault, ride a 30-km loop through the increasingly flattening countryside between Schöckl and Graz: along the Römerweg and down the Schöcklbach to Weinitzen, then via Nadischhöhe and Eidexberg eastwards, and then passing Kumberg and Willersdorf back to St. Radegund.
True, this area already has more of a suburban-belt than a recreational-area feel. But once again the region captivates us with its charm, its greenery and the widespread absence of architectural eyesores; all the more so the more the route consistently takes scarcely trafficked side roads, grazes picturesque cultural landscapes or passes real places of power at scenic benches and natural monuments.

Only around Kumberg are the views briefly marred by the B72, the usual supermarkets and car washes. But the spell is short-lived and has its advantages: where civilization is denser, there are enough people to run facilities like Well Welt Kumberg, an idyllic bathing lake with a campsite.
And hardly have we, via Not, worked our way back up into lonelier terrain, when everything we have come to appreciate in the past hours and days is there again: the impressive panoramic and downward views, the neatly renovated little houses, the splendidly tended vegetable beds and delicious-tasting apples (for the record: we tasted only windfall fruit), the undisturbed free-range chickens, cows here and there.

The Lurgrotte is hardly any less varied, by the way: in the light of countless LED lamps a beehive and a bell, twins and a pine grove, spaghetti, several sets of dentures, a leaning tower and much more emerge from the darkness.
Perhaps, we thought at the very end, that's why the Lur witch looks so grim: because she herself sits petrified in her rock wall and knows she will never get to see all this splendour?