Dan and I are not necessarily known for being the sportiest people, but we like a walk, particularly where there’s some good scenery to take in.
Our summer holiday in 2005 gave us lots of walking opportunities, visiting a town in Slovenia which is a ski resort in the winter, but has lots of walking and biking options in the summer. The views were fantastic, and there were lots of well-signposted routes to try out. We even came back contemplating further active holidays, which is a good sign for us.
This year, we didn’t really manage anything on the same scale, although we did some walking in Fife around Easter time. However, going to Austria, which has some stunning mountains, we felt we had to have a day’s walking at least.
Maybe it’s an efficiency thing in Germanic countries, but when we set out to do our walk, we found a lot more people with us! The Alpine societies keep everything in very good order, and we took on a gorge climb, mostly through series of wooden ladders which enabled you to move from level to level.
I gave up counting how many we’d been up after 100 – and yes, every bridge was neatly labelled…What impressed me was the number of families where everyone was out walking, even where the kids were quite small.
By the top of the gorge, the organised air continued: a fully functioning pub serving meals as well as liquid refreshments. Admittedly the weather was good for walking that day, but the pub and surrounding meadows were packed with people resting after the climb.
We headed back down the path, rather than return down the gorge, though the path was also pretty steep in points. The number of people who had climbed with kids in backpacks or brought trecking-type pushchairs up became more and more impressive. It wasn’t as restful as being able to hike almost on our own in Slovenia, but we came away feeling we had gained an extra insight into Austrian society.
We also felt we should gain some extra points for hiking from a starting point town called Mixnitz. Maybe there’s room for some kind of pre-Christmas product called Mixnutz.