Orgler Kaprun

... 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 ...

... Eagle’s Nest. It is a precision timing of buses in that the road is only one lane, except for 2 pullover stops. After that, we boarded the brass elevator to go up to the building. Our guide gave another little speech and then we had 40 free minutes before we had to meet back down at the bus. The view was simply incredible. Puffed up the hill a ways for some good photo opportunities. (Only float pens at ...

... legs began to whimper and ask whether it wasn't time to gently ride back to base for a nice, cold beer. However, they quickly came to their senses and marshalled themselves for the coming onslaught: a long, hard fire road climb up 9 long switchbacks. Bigger than anything in South East England, for sure. The reward was worth it: a long singletrack descent with lots to offer in ...

... 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 ...

... technical singletrack which was much more of a challenge for me and I had to work on shifting my balance on the bike, keeping the weight much further back, and trying to take a more balanced approach to braking, as I was heavily favouring the back brake (to such an extent that the rear tyre showed significantly more wear at the end of the week). Mountaintop lunch was a "Strammel Max" (ham, eggs ...

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 ...

... sitting in the cafe so they weren't that brave really!!!!! The accom and ski package also included the local swimming pool. David, of course, had to try it out and was pleasantly surprised when Lorraine took her bathers with her. They had a lovely jaunt in the indoor pool whilst looking out at people in the OUTSIDE POOL - people do you understand, this is in Austria where Spring time the temperature is under 10 degrees C. Mad, mad, mad! David however, had ...

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.

... played a lot of old Austrian folk songs, some Strauss waltzes, some light classical music and, to top it off, the Stars and Stripes Forever. I had chills running down my spine. Another perfect end to another perfect day.

August 28-Wednesday KitzbuhelWe woke up to rain again this morning and took a walk around town to do a little shopping (we discovered that rain in the morning is fairly common and doesn’t stop the locals from going about ...