Karlshof Saalbach

... 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.

... took us right up through the mountain to the top. An elevator in the middle of the mountain! It was made of such good brass and the engineering was so good, it has ever been serviced. But it also caused the deaths of 12 construction workers when it was made. Or thats what we were told. After the war, the UK and USA blew up most of his buildings in this area but Germany managed to save the Eagle's Nest because it was so amazing and ...

... ago. At that time we had entered the bunkers from that staircase and there was just our little tour and it was all very awesome and personal. In the new center, one enters from a well lit hallway (with aforementioned storyboards). And there were crowds of people coming and going everywhere. To me, it just didn’t have the same atmosphere.

We had to hop onto a second bus to head up the mountain to ...

En route to the airport, Keith needed to do a bit of shopping for next week's guests so we paid a visit to Kufstein while he shopped there. Kufstein is a town with big history, owned by Bavaria in the middle ages but long one of Tirol's most northerly towns. The historical centre is hard to miss: an ancient castle perched atop a hill.

The lower Altstadt is cute but consists ...

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 ...

... a little drop into a berm and I managed to confuse myself into doing something stupid and taking a brief trailside lie down. This is a trail with big, steep, fast, bermed sections and is fun to ride in sections and a bit scary in others, particularly on a 4" lightweight XC racing bike. Down at the bottom it goes a bit 4x and you can walk back up and practice this section, which is good, fast ...

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 ...

... than a ruin. The plaster is chipped and crumbling, exposing the red bricks and mortar that make up the core of the building. The clock has rusted to a stop. The yard surrounding the church is a mixture of gravel, weeds, and grass clumps. The only thing seemingly new with the church is the gate, shiny new and with a strong lock. I went up to the cemetery at the top of the hill. From there I could gain a perspective of the town to the countryside, and if ...

August 26-Monday
We left Kitzbuhel at 8:30. There was a brief stop in Berchtesgarden, in Germany, at 10:00. Up on the side of the mountain, we could see Hitler's Eagle’s Nest. It was rather chilling to see that part of history. The bunker is now a restaurant. Our rest stop overlooked a valley filled with wonderful homes. What a view! Back on the bus and on to Salzburg. Time 10:35.

... if I repeat myself…I was at a loss for the right words to describe the scene. This has to prove there is a God…no mortal could have created anything as spectacular as this. I hurried back up to the top so I could share this with Bev. She was just as taken with this view as I was. It was as if we were sitting in a theater as the curtain rose and the show began. Unfortunately, the last car going down was scheduled to leave at 5:30, so we had ...