Thursday 25th September 2008 – Zell am Ziller, Tyrol, Austria

The gentle rain during the night continued into the morning and, as per forecast, it looked as though we were in for a wet day. Jane did some washing and met another couple in the laundry area. A difficult conversation followed in broken German until they discovered that they all spoke English – they were American! I arrived and we ended up having a long chat in the laundry. Dave and Susan were a lovely couple and we invited them over for a drink this evening.
The whole day was spent in the van with gentle rain falling all day with an occasional lull. This gave plenty of time for reading and catching up with the blog. We are hoping that the weather forecast for tomorrow, showing somewhat drier weather, is correct.
Dave and Sue came around and we spent a very pleasant couple of hours with them. We found out that they were just a couple of years younger and married when she was 20 years old and he was 19, just the same as us! They live in Milwaukee but he travels widely in his job as an engineer. He is also very keen on photography and, like me, takes far too many photographs when on holiday.
Photos: The cloudy view down the valley this morning. Compare and contrast with yesterday's photograph!

Wednesday 24th September 2008 – Zell am Ziller, Tyrol, Austria

The weather forecast was much better for today and it was correct. We woke to find one of those lovely Alpine days – blue skies, wisps of clouds around the mountains and clear views of the peaks. It was definitely a day for walking.
The very helpful lady in the tourist information office and recommended two walks to us, both of which started from the town. We chose the one that went east in the direction of Gerlos, the way that we had travelled to Zell. A few hundred metres of road walking from the campsite brought us to the start of the footpaths and we were soon passing the site of gold mines from the 17th century. We walked up the steep path past evidence of opencast mining (removal of rock directly from the mountainside) and the remains of exploratory shafts. The boards informed us that 300,000 tonnes of rock were removed and 1 tonne of gold extracted before the mines closed. This being Austria, it is all very neat now with no scar on the landscape visible from afar. We passed a pretty pilgrimage church on the way up to the village of Dorfl. The views of the Ziller Valley on the way up, when we were out of the woods, and from the village were excellent. In Dorfl we found another example of excellent Austrian organisation – an attractive, purpose built public building that housed the school, kindergarten, public offices and even, in garages under the building, the fire station.
Dorfl was the highest part of the walk and soon after we started our descent towards the hamlet of Bichl, we found a seat in the sun and sat down to eat our sandwiches. The route down took us past a mixture of pasture and woodland including an area that had recently been felled. Unsurprisingly, the journey down was much quicker than the walk up and we were soon back at the campsite. The clouds were beginning to form and there were ominously black clouds hanging over the mountains in the east. As evening arrived, so did the rain, gentle but persistent.
Photos: The wonderfully sunny and clear views down the valley from the campsite; This cow came to greet us at the beginning of the walk; A view of Zell from the walk – the campsite is situated in the bottom of the valley on this side of the town, just above the second house from the left, in the middle of the picture; The local farmer was cutting grass, raking it together and loading it into this backpack basket.

Tuesday 23rd September 2008 – Zell am Ziller, Tyrol, Austria

The clouds clung around the mountainsides, obscuring the peaks and rain was threatening. Over breakfast we listened to the bells of the cows grazing in the field next to the campsite. Today was about exploring Zell am Ziller and, after doing chores in the morning, we set off on the short walk into the centre of the town. We had stayed in Zell am Ziller twice before but both visits were over thirty years ago. We thought that we would remember parts of the town but neither of recognised anything. We did however remember that it was very tidy and very pretty and that was certainly still the case. The impressive main church is surrounded by an immaculately-kept churchyard that is full of flowers. The interior is also very pretty with a beautifully painted dome. The town centre is very compact and the wide river Ziller, less tan 100m from the church, marks the edge of the town. The green and white icy-looking water, nearly 2m deep, rushes past – there must be a large volume of water passing and during the spring snow melt it must be huge. As always in Austria towns and villages, there are flowers everywhere and in the central park we found an army of people digging up the flower beds in order to plant different flowers. The old flowers were still in bloom and looking pretty, but everything had to go including bushes three and four feet high. Looking at the quality of the public buildings, facilities and parks, and the immaculately maintained roads, footpaths etc., I wonder how much the Austrians pay in tax. I can remember our hosts 30 years ago bemoaning the fact that they had to pay a considerable proportion of their income to the Roman Catholic Church in order to ensure that their children got a good education and I wonder whether this is still the case. I am sure that he cost of living in Austria is high but the country is very beautiful and seems to be very well organised. Voting in the Austrian General Election is taking place on Sunday and BBC Radio 4 reported this morning that there is another upsurge in support for the Austrian far right parties with their ultra-nationalistic, anti-immigration policies. There is a danger that they will get power as part of a coalition in the new parliament. Last time that this happened, it caused a real fuss in the rest of Europe, reminding many of the strong Nazism in Austria before and during the Second World War. End of rant!
We went to the tourist information office when it reopened at 14:30 and obtained a map of the town and the surrounding area together with details of local walks. This is another thing that the Austrian's are very good at – tourist information and marked walking trails.
The campsite has got WiFi Internet but at €5 per hour it is expensive so we decided to look for other options in the town. We went to the only Internet/gaming shop in the town and used their WiFi at a cost of ...... €5 for an hour – I think that there is a cartel operating in Zell am Ziller!
Photos: This farm is right in the centre of Zell with the cows in the pasture behind. This is typical of Zell and many other Austrian towns and villages, houses interspersed by farms and fields.

Monday 22nd September 2008

More rain during the night but it had stopped by the time that we left. The whole of the journey was through spectacular mountain scenery, over high passes and, almost always, following streams up and down valleys. I had noticed that Zell am See, a popular package destination many years ago, was only just off our route and I suggested that we stopped there for lunch. The map showed a road running close to the lake and we attempted to find it but ended up in a very long tunnel, emerging beyond the end of the lake. We found the road on the way back but there was always a railway line between the road and the lake and nowhere to park with a view of the water. We soon entered another tunnel and we ended up on a road out of the town. We gave up and eventually found a lay-by about 20 miles further on – there was a very small lake and a view of the mountains but it wasn't quite the same as Zell am See.
More splendid views followed with the highlight being a long distance view of the famous Kriml Waterfall surrounded by the snow covered high mountains.
We descended a steep road from the Gerlos Pass and came across a herd of Alpine cows, complete with bells and beautifully decorated collars, being taken down from the high pasture to the valley. I asked Jane to get her camera to take some pictures but, as we were directed through the herd, she was so busy watching to make sure that I didn't hit any of the cows, she didn't take any photographs. She will never have a career as a photographer's assistant! Continuing our descent, we arrived in Zell am Ziller and quickly found the Hofer Campsite, which was surprisingly busy but there was still plenty of space for us.
Photos: A view of the area around the Kriml Waterfall, one of the spectacular views that we saw on our journey to Zell am Ziller.

Sunday 21st September 2008 – Halstatt, Austria

We made a deal yesterday – if it was fine in the morning we would walk up to the salt mine, if it was raining we would use the funicular. It was actually overcast with the cloud base below the mountain peaks and it had rained a little but when we were ready to set off, it wasn't actually raining. We decided to walk. It is quite a long steep walk, zig-zagging up the hillside to to the Hallstatt High Valley but there were frequent information boards with English text and this gave a good excuse to have a breather. There was also a view of the waterfall on the 'Millbrook' that drains the High Valley where thick alluvial clay means that the water does not soak away but runs off very quickly, causing problems in very wet weather. The town of Hallstatt is on a small promontory and this was formed by scree and clay washed down from the mountain.
We reached the top and admired the view from the top before going on to look at the other sights. As we had recently visited a salt mine near Krakow, we did not want to visit this salt mine even though it looked very good – two large wooden slides (great fun – I went down one years ago in the Bad Ischl salt mine), prehistoric shafts, salt lakes etc. We did however visit the Hallstatt Period sites - reconstructed bacon curing pit, the reconstructed miner's house and the famous cemetery. The archaeologists still excavate both the mines and the cemetery every Summer and were there today. They had excavated some prehistoric wood and had it under water sprays outside their offices. They had also been excavating in the huge cemetery – over 1,500 graves had been excavated by 2007 but it is thought that there may be a total of 5,000, enough to keep the archaeologists going for many years! There was a small building that housed an example of two burials, an inhumation and a cremation, complete with examples of the grave goods. It was very well presented but, for some reason best known to the creators, they were playing jolly piped music – perhaps to counteract the solemnity of the burials?
Last year they constructed a steel bridge across the valley that provided access to the funicular and the Rudolf Tower and gave superb views over the lake and the surrounding mountains. We walked over to the tower, admiring the views on the way and found a table by a window in the restaurant on the first floor of the tower. We enjoyed Gulash Soup and the view from the window.
We had hoped to continue our walk down on another path back to the town but found it closed for safety reasons. This meant that we had to retrace our steps down the zig-zag path, then turning left and descending to the opposite side of the town. Here we came to the Parish Catholic Church built in the 16th century with a particularly interesting Charnel House. Since the middle of the 19th century, the local population have removed the bones of their dean from their graves and painted the skulls, sometimes with decorations but always with the name of the deceased. We were able to visit the charnel house and see the exhibit of the skulls, the latest of which was painted in 1995. A strange idea but somehow more seemly than the bone constructions that we had seen in Portugal.
We wandered back through the town to the campsite, pausing to look through glass panels at the remains of the Roman baths under a souvenir shop. Yes, the Romans were here and, of course, exploited the salt deposits but they lived by the side of the lake rather than in the high valley.
Photos: Hallstatt from above; The view from the Hallstatt High Valley with the Rudolf Tower on the left; Looking up the Hallstatt High Valley with the salt mine ahead and the cemetery on the left; Hallstatt and the lake.

Saturday 20th September 2008 – Halstatt, Austria

We spent the last of Czech currency on groceries and fuel and then followed the sat nav's interesting route. This took us round the end of the lake to its southern lake and then due south over the hills into Austria on a road that wasn't shown on our Europe road atlas. It was an excellent route taking us on minor road, through pretty villages and over the undulating meadow countryside with many farms with huge barns, typical Austrian scenery. Given that it was a very grey, overcast morning, we didn't expect to see views but the cloud was high enough to see a long way. This was particularly the case when, having gained considerable height since the Vodni Nadrz Lipno lake, we approached the Donau (Danube) river. Just before the descent to the river, we had a commanding view east, south and west. We quickly crossed the incredibly wide Danube and admired that watery highway – a number of large barges were plying up and down the river whilst two more were moored on the southern bank being loaded with grain. We briefly followed the river east on its southern bank before we struck of south, deeper into Austria.
Approaching Lake Traunsee, we saw a huge shape looming up, largely surrounded by clouds. It was a snow-dusted mountain on the shores of the lake and probably wasn't much higher that 2,000m but it looked enormous to us given that we had just crossed a long largely flat section of the route. It was lunch time and we stopped at a lay-by on Traunsee's shore, opposite that moody peak. The lay-by had spotless toilets complete with toilet paper, hand towels and even a bar of soap on a small mat to stop it sliding about. The was no graffiti. Clean and tidy Austria! In Britain, the toilets would have been vandalised and the soap would not have lasted one day.
Over lunch it started to rain and it continued for the next 50 minutes until we arrived in Hallstatt on the Hallstatter See lake. The campsite on the edge of the town is in a small valley bordered by steep-sided mountains and this applies to the whole of the lake, making it very picturesque even in the rain and low cloud. Here too, the recent rain had fallen as snow on the tops of the highest mountains.
We walked the short distance into the UNESCO World Heritage listed town passed the coach park with many tourist coaches in it. It was obvious why they were there, the village is extremely pretty, full of lovely wooden houses. This combined with the lake and the history of salt mining in the area attracts the tourists. In the centre of the town is a museum and, given that we had a couple of hours before it closed and it was raining, we decided to go in. One of the reasons that we wanted to come here is because of the European culture known as the 'Hallstatt Culture', approximately 800 to 500 BC. The culture was named after a very important find of remains dating back to this period in the area of Hallstatt. It is all connected with the salt deposits that have brought wealth to the area from about 1400 BC right up to the current time. Salt was mined, refined and traded over a very wide area and the wealthy 'mine masters' during the period 800 to 500 BC were buried together with rich grave goods in a cemetery close to the mines high above the current town of Hallstatt. In 330 BC a disastrous rock and mud fall covered the mine entrances and the settlements from this period and mining moved to a different area of the mountain. The cemetery, due to its position on the mountainside, survived the rock and mud fall and was found and excavated in 1846. The records of the excavation are very good and, although many of the early finds were carried away by 'tourists', there are still some very impressive finds in the museum including many swords, Celtic-style spiral fibulae and bronze vessels. Due to the preservative effects of salt, organic materials have been found dating back to between the 14th and 8th centuries BC. These include a rucksack and cap made from skins, wooden tools and patterned cloth. Fascinating!
Photos: The Traunsee Lake and its brooding mountain; A piece of modern art in Hallstatt – the story is that each Hallstatt house has a pair of Wellington Boots on its dining table in case the floods hit. The heights of past floods are shown by the markers on the left post; The prehistoric (14th to 8th century BC) backpack found in the salt mines; A view of Hallstatt and its boathouses.

Friday 19th September 2008 – Lipno, Czech Republic

Reluctantly, it was time to leave Trebon and head south towards Austria. Our first stop was the UNESCO World Herritage town of Cesky Krumlov and, even though we had visited it last year, it warranted another one. The sun was still shining although the forecast suggested that we should enjoy it whilst we could – rain was on the way.
Cesky Krumlov always looks beautiful but is at its best in the sunshine. The castle looked splendid, high on the rock above the loop in the Vlatava river. I found the same restaurant, 'Krcma v Satlavske', that we visited last year (and 14 years before that) and we ordered the soup. This came in a very large crusty roll, or small loaf, that had been partly hollowed out. The garlic soup soaked into the bread but did not come out of the sides. It was delicious but neither of us could eat all of the bread, so we were left with the two empty bread cases. We did a tour of the many tourist shops in the town that included many excellent potters and glass shops and then headed back to Henrietta. A tip for anyone coming here – the car parks are expensive but there is free parking on the sides of the road south of the town.
Photos: The Cseky Krumlov Hrad (castle) sitting above the Vlatava River; The impressive bridge of the castle; The Krcma v Satlavske restaurant.