Well-Vital Pension Hollaus Kirchberg

... hand at an ariel assault course....he came back a shell of his former self after 3 hours in the trees hanging from bits of wire and trying to keep up with 9 year old girls who were more agile than him..for my penance I had to play pitch and putt with Lauren using carved putters and wooden balls..no danger i'll be joining a golf tour anytime soon. 

Definitely worth a visit in winter for you keen boarders out there.

... down by the ankles to two vertical poles, then sawn in half down the middle. Right down the cleft. Thinking of all the roadside shrines and crosses I had seen in the Tirol, my mind strayed to wonder how the religious imagery of Christian Europe might be rather different had the Romans favoured this method of execution instead of crucifixion!

Behind the tower is a ...

Overnight rain had made little impact on the trails. Out here, they don't degenerate rapidly into mush like back home. Keith and I rode up behind the farm and up into the hills. The climbs were long and hard but rewarded by sweet woodland singletrack descents of varying levels of difficulty, peppered with rooty and rocky sections, steep and technical. Really big roots! I couldn't ...

... br>
Back up for another run at Flying Gangster without falling off, but by now the weather was closing in and it looked as though I was pushing my luck to try another run.

On the way home, we stopped off and did some shopping. We stayed in and cooked Krapfern, slow-roast tomatoes and roast sausage, which was excellent, and yoghurt for dessert, all locally-produced except the toms.

Another lovely farm-fresh breakfast. We had bought 2-day lift passes for Skiwelt so spent a second consecutive day there. Katie used the lifts and went walking along the top from above Scheffau toward Ellmau then down the funicular railway there.

Keith and I took the lift up from Scheffau. A lovely, blue, sunny day. The nature of the riding took a significant step up today. We practiced ...

After breakfast, we took a short ride along the cycle route to Söll where we bought our Skiwelt lift passes and took the ski lifts up to the hilltop.

There had been some rain overnight but it doesn't degenerate the trails here to the same extent as those around London. We practised gravelly switchbacks: moderately challenging and reasonably steep, then took the lifts up again from Söll for another go. We lunched at a mountaintop restaurant with it's own open ...

The first day of proper MTB.

Keith and Manu's cousin Arthur led us up some big fire road climbs into the Wilderkaiser. The climbs were appropriately long and testing on such a hot, sunny day, and we were rewarded with some great views, including the Hintersteinsee lake and a mountain-top lunch break at a restaurant where we had a plush Tirolean cheese and meat board and a glass of their own St ...

They even have a special word for the rain that falls in Salzburg - it's something like Schnurlregen - but I'd have to find my Austrian book to check the spelling. Well, that was my fear for my holiday! And here we were, landed in Salzburg, and guess what? rain!

Luckily by the time we'd waited for the passengers from Glasgow to arrive so that our coach could leave it'd stopped raining - so it couldn't have been that special Salzburg rain that ...

... didn´t even know that these guys were out of Quebec. Une petit monde, oui? So we walked. And walked. And walked. And when both Matt´s knee and mine gave out, we walked some more. Watched the game. Danced a bit (never again. I don´t dance, and neither does any Dutch guy I know. We tried to tell the French girls numerous times, but they just don´t have listening skills out East). I would also like to say Happy Birthday to my Dad, the best Dad I have ...

... saw the most delightful parade! All the vehicles were decorated with flowers, from horse drawn wagons to cars, trucks, even the fire engines. The parade stepped off with the town band, playing that wonderful Bavarian music. We just stood on the side of the street with the rest of the people to watch the parade. It was a great experience, and one that we just happened upon! The festival with music, food…the works…was going on in town afterward ...