3/8 Grandad’s Birthday - oi oi oi!!!
Rain settled around 7 am so out go the oldies for a run (Jeff) and a walk (Jen - runner’s envy ++), meeting after 34 minutes for a cool dip & short float down the Isar and then back thru the wakening soggy campsite (pity on the tenters hanging out their sleeping bags!!) to our beautiful kids who have wakened ready for us.
Our poor neighbour’s were out when the storm hit and, having left their purple VW’s hatch open, have wet bedding amongst other things. The inspirational older woman heads out for a run whilst her hubby fusses about hanging stuff out in the peeping sun exchanging German-English pleasantries & asking us to hold this and that as we school and prepare for departure to Austria!!
We’re ready to go early afternoon and wave warm goodbyes - such great people. Feeling most enamoured with incredibly live-able Munich with it’s blue & white checkered Bavarian flag and a little sad knowing this might be our last stay in Germany, we have one last small town on our list - Tegersee. We find one of Germany’s great supermarket chains, Edeka and top up on fruit & vege then trickle around the lake past the hordes of local holiday makers and over the pass into Austria. Seems so strange seeing such large, abandoned border posts and instead just a wee blue sign.
Almost immediately, the terrain becomes fluffy green and much more undulous with lakes, waterfalls and gushing brooks everywhere.
Coming down the other side of the pass, we spy a small road around the glacial blue Achensee lake sprinkled with tiny bobbing monohulls signalling a local yacht club and drive around a tight twist to find our night spot. We crack a bottle of red ...in celebration!?
The kids get swept up in Harry Potter whilst we view the 12th and final episode of Band of Brother’s, where they march the 25000 surrendered German soldiers out of Zell am See in Austria (our destination for tomorrow!)
The views from our windows are something else with a small cruise vessel chugging past all lit up like a beautiful Christmas tree. We drift into sleep hearing the lapping sound of water and tinkling of boat masts.
4/8
Wake to lakeside 10 BX and then an icy swim in the deep blue-green water. Kel pokes her sweet sleepy, pink face, eyes still glued with “sand”, up to her window and asks us to wait so she can join us.
Ripping off her jammies, she plonks in, squealing with delight and then perches next to her daddy on a rock cocooned in a pink towel. The first coffee.
Practicing our Italian, we ready for breakfast and the second coffee. Soothing sounds of water settle the school room into a productive hum.
A short drive takes us over the Gerlos Pass, past magnificent Alpine vistas made homey by quaint timber hotels whose balconies burst & overflow with masses of colourful flowers.
Lakes & tarns sprawl across all scenes in all shades of blue/green as we enter into Hohe Tauern National Park, Europe’s LARGEST, to see Krimml Falls, Europe’s LARGEST. 75,000l/minute of water fed by 23 glaciers. It’s white water almost illuminates the valley it thunders into and rainbows make small bridges linking the ridges everywhere. Hikers and bikers bead the heavenly landscape. A few cows walk the highway and graze the endless grassy hills.
We find a standtplatz and after a lunch of weisswurst with sweet senf, cheese, salad & bread, bag packed with the last of stroep sandwiches (hiker’s food AKA -bickie rock), we head off at 1600 against the sea of people streaming down the path.
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| Krimml Falls |
Perfect - the heavens are darkening, the rain is threatening and the crowds are significantly thinning. We stop regularly, closing our eyes and holding our faces to the spray and refreshing our intent to power up the arduous760m climb.
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| Krimml Falls |
I keep waiting for Kel to realize the physical demand but her stories & singing keep coming - until the last 100m or so. Wil’s powered up and comes back down to carry Kel the last few meters! By this time it is pouring and in our shorts & T-shirts, we’re just starting to get cold. Saved by stroep sandwiches beneath the sheltering canopy of a massive Christmas tree on a carpet of fresh smelling pine needles, we are ready for a saturating bolt down.
Brilliant - home and satiated, we make a hot pot of sauer lunge (lemony kidney & liver stew) and gobble it down with nutty bread.
Jeff & Kel smash out some UNO and Wil finishes his Les Miserables essay. We’ll ask Grandma to mark it rather than Mr C this time.
5/8
Heavy rain all night but this morning the sun warms things up, pushing the low-lying clouds back up the mountains & revealing a high perched solar farm! Whilst having coffee #1 on a rock our friendly Belgian neighbours depart with boisterous waves and we decide to stay another day and experience the incredible falls from other angles.
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| The Classroom |
School allows time to hang a few things out to dry before we alight the bikes for a tour of the town, pump of tyres, inspect the most decorative graveyard yet, and cash in on kaffee & kuchen offered with our parking ticket.
Despite obvious similarities to Germany ( language & food), Austria so far has a distinct character. They speak much less English,Italians vastly outnumber other tourists, the women & girls wear traditional beautiful long dresses and aprons to go to town & the men wear lederhoses and funny hats and the fields are once again romantic with the tinkling sounds of cow bells. They seem to soften the practicalities with more aesthetic awareness evidenced breath-taking sprays of colourful flowers everywhere. Kel reckons we have finally discovered BK land!
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| Krimml Cemetery |
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| Krimml main street |
All fueled up, we follow the allure of the waterfall, riding up close beneath the spray and then back down onto some good challenging gravel bike tracks following the glacial waters thundering down a rocky river.Wil’s increases everyone’s pleasure by regularly rejoicing & exclaiming that “life’s good!!”
Kel powers on chanting “ I can do it!” but a cracking hiss cuts our action probably just in time with my first serious puncture. Mountain Man & Mr Fixit, Jeff pulls out the kit and I, more fuel (nuts & carrots) and the kids throw pebbles, stones & boulders into the water delighting in the different timbres of the plonk.
I nurse my partly fixed puncture home (a few pumps along the way) and Kel gets off struggling but not giving up. Poor little thing, her long, sticky legs have received some intensive work in the last 48 hours. Jeff rewards the bambinos with an iced chocolate and we all settle to finishing off homework and then our first sit down Italian lesson!
The simplest pasta dinner has the family grunting in appreciation and then….bed with a book!
6/8
Jeff and I turn-take cycling back up the switch back alpine road that Eddie took as we dropped into this valley. Utterly distracted by water gushing everywhere, magnificent ‘blicks’ (=lookout), tinkling cow bells and crisp early morning mountain air, we don’t appreciate our impressive ascent until we turn around and scorch home in a third of the time!
Coffee on a rock in the sun with Kel huddled in a blanket and hair everywhere, then all up for calozione (Italian for breakfast) and school. Jeff ambles into town to recoup today’s kaffe & kuchen deal, get some brot and e-mails and then we cruise off to drink in more mountain vistas.
On another toll road through remarkable scenery we learn of a detour to a tiny town from which many walks lead into the mountains enabling views of the Grossvenediger, the Grossglockner, never-ending ribbon waterfalls and tarns. We chose a barely marked track through fields tracing one of the many waterfalls and decide to grind up for 1 hour before turning about. We gain elevation really quickly and enjoy wonderful views. The kids entertain themselves noisily all the way up creating spells from their grass wands.
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| Mountain Goats |
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| Leaping Mountain Goose |
Back in Ed, Wil reads us his catalogue poem about Germany, Kel does some map learning, we all warm up with a hot chocolate/coffee and then after a light yoghurt dinner….read as the rain sets in.
7/8
Awake and not sure about exercise opportunities given the amount of rain that fell last night, the soggy ground and the demanding gradients that surround us. Jeff opts to stay in bed with a book but I’m so grateful that my stiffness demands I get up. Waiting up the waterfall-lined valley only 1 hour away, is the most breath-taking view across the Grossvenediger Glacier glistening in the early morning sunlight that we didn’t see at all yesterday!
Blown away and bursting with the news of my ‘find’, I race back to the van,throw open all the blinds and boisterously command the boys to jump on their bikes for a vigorous pre-brekkie thump up the trail to ‘the’ viewpoint. Wil’s always on for it and off they go.
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| just another nameless waterfall |
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| zoomed in Grossvendiger Glacier |
Back with exhilarated smiles & all energized, we share our usual delicious breakfast but with a touch of caution ‘cos Ed’s poo-chamber is full up. Kel’s regular gut is the first to rumble. Wil offers to accompany her up to the nearest guesthouse to ask to use the facilities even before her plate of cereal is done!
Success and they’re back for the rest of breakfast, Italian & physiology lessons over hot drinks and preparations to head off.
Destination Heilingeblut is modified as we round the corner to spectacular Lienz beneath the craggy imposing Dolomite range. A camping sign beckons Jeff and we decide to stop.
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| Dolomites in the clouds |
Waste out (just in time), lunch in and on the bikes to town for more information on hiking, biking and driving the great Alpine roads. The place is full of holidaying Italians (only 40kms from the border) and expensive gear and bike shops. Wil & Jeff hop from shop to shop spending their imagined Lotto wins! Other business includes getting an Austrian SIM card & fresh gorgeous walnut brot and having the obligatory sticky beak of the altstadt.
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| Lienz centre |
With internet, we spend the early evening busily uploading the blog and sending e-mails as the Dolomites change colour.
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