Abbie the Cat incognito…

Well, Readers, it’s fair to say that those of you in the South of England have been having a bit of a hot time (ahem) – when we flew back from Austria yesterday (no diversions to Munich this time) the fields and parks were all parched yellow. My lovely neighbour has been watering the plants with the watering can (we’ve now got a hosepipe ban) but at least my dahlias have survived. Incidentally, do you call them day-le-as or dar-le-as? I’d only ever heard them pronounced the first way until about a year ago, when there seemed to be an epidemic of dar-le-as going on. No judgement, but I’m curious.

Anyway.

As we know, the real question is how did my new foster cat Abbie get on, and was she happy to see us? Our (male) neighbour looked after her for the first week, and in spite of his being the kindest, most gentle chap you can imagine, she spent most of the time hissing every time he looked at her and then retreating to the attic like someone from a Daphne du Maurier novel. However, in the second week the cat person that we had for our previous cat, Willow, came in, and by the end of the week she was allowed to stroke Her Majesty, so progress.

Now, some cats I’ve fostered/owned (inasmuch as you ever really own a cat) would punish me if I went away. One once took a crap in the middle of the duvet. Another would sit with her back to me for several days until she decided that I’d suffered enough. Willow would spend the first night walking into the bedroom, letting out an ear-splitting wail every couple of hours.

Abbie, on the other hand, has decided that if she doesn’t leave my side everything will be okay. She’s helping me with this blog as I type.

It’s hard to believe she’s the same cat as the one that spent best part of a week hiding behind the litter tray, but there we go.

Next week she’s off to the vet for a quick once-over. It’ll be interesting to see how that goes, but apart from being a bit stiff she seems fine to me. At fourteen, there will be no invasive procedures or other stuff unless it’s strictly necessary for her comfort. I want her to have a bit of peace and quiet after losing her previous owner and having a very traumatic few months.

On the Mountain

By John Haines

We climbed out of timber,
bending on the steep meadow
to look for berries,
then still in the reddening sunlight
went on up the windy shoulder.

A shadow followed us up the mountain
like a black moon rising.
Minute by minute the autumn lamps
on the slope burned out.

Around us the air and the rocks
whispered of night . . .

A great cloud blew from the north,
and the mountain vanished
in the rain and stormlit darkness.

Well, Readers, the centre of Obergurgl has been taken over by all sorts of inflatables and men shouting into microphones in German: yes, it’s the Gletscher Trail Run 2026. On Friday night, some people will be running 62 kilometres up and down the local peaks, with the race starting at 2.00 a.m. Last year the winner was North Macedonian runner Aleksander Stojkoski, and very impressive that was too. There are lots of shorter races, but this one is the one everyone wants to win. The fastest woman was Austrian Edith Zell, who came home in 8 hours 59 minutes, and what impresses me about her is that she’s in the 40-44 age category. In fact, looking at the results overall there are lots of folk aged between 40 and 55 – maybe endurance peaks in middle age? I also have great respect for the person who finished last, Timo Hornig of Germany, who arrived at the finish after 13 hours and 45 minutes, alongside another German, Marc Metzger, who arrived just a second earlier – I imagine these two had been keeping one another company for all those hours. You can see all the results here. It would have taken me about 24 hours to even walk the route.

Anyhow, after our ambitious walk yesterday we decided to take a more reasonable walk through the meadows, with only a slight deviation from our first day walk to cross a terrifying (well, slightly scary) bridge. It’s always interesting to see how flowers that were just tight buds two weeks ago are now in full flower, like these Melancholy Thistles.

There was a thunderstorm last night, and everything is looking very green…

And here is the scary bridge! Normally you can’t reach it, but some kind soul has popped in a new path, and so you can walk back across the Gurgl. This also eliminates a steepish climb, so I shall have to remember it for next year, when we’ll be looking for an easy early walk.

There were some tiny birds twittering away in the willows by the river but I’m not at all sure what they were – help! Slightly smaller than a sparrow and feeding on grass seeds. I’ve seen Linnet several times, so that’s one thought…

And then some real excitement – the kestrel who has been hanging around our hotel put in an appearance, and was roundly mobbed by a spotted nutcracker who was not at all impressed.

On we go, to the frog pond, which was seething with tadpoles two weeks ago. Now there are far fewer tadpoles, but lots of larger ones, many with their back legs appearing. You have to grow up fast in the Alps – the season is short, and many ponds dry up. Not this one, fortunately.

And then I spotted this flower, which is rather special – it’s Clustered Bellflower (Campanula glomerata), and it’s an Alpine specialist. It is the most extraordinary deep indigo colour, as so many bee-pollinated plants are.

And then it’s on a bus and off to the Giggisjoch for lunch – you might remember the splendid homemade grapefruit ‘lemonade’ and soup from a few days ago. Today, it was fresh strawberry lemonade….

and this very splendid ‘bread pudding’ – actually more like Queen of Puddings, plus custard (of course!) and berries. It was really tasty!

And tomorrow it’s off home. Let’s hope that Easyjet gets us to the correct country this time, that the trains from Gatwick are running, and that the temperature isn’t too much of a shock.

Dear Readers, regulars will know that one of my favourite places in the whole world is the Rotmoos Valley here in Obergurgl – indeed, this time I was suggesting to my poor long-suffering husband that he could scatter some of my ashes here (not that I’m planning on being cremated any time soon, but it’s good to plan). Alas, to get here involves a pretty steep climb, although the Schonweisse Hut (the little brown building on the left of the photo above) does a pretty good Apfelstrudel.

This year the whole village has been a bit of a building site, as they are building a new reservoir, which looks to be about three times the size of the one in the photo above. This is partly because conditions are getting drier, but also to provide water for the snow-blowing machines in winter, now that, even here, the snow is not reliable.

Building site for the new reservoir

It’s illegal for a lift to operate over a building site, for obvious reasons, so instead the first stage lift (which we usually take to avoid several hundred metres of rather boring uphill) has been replaced by an electric shuttle bus. Babies, toddlers, parents, grandparents and us all pile in at the bottom of the hill, in the village, and then go up the precipitous road to the second stage lift, dodging earth movers and all manner of trucks in the process. The bus was crammed to busting both ways today, and goodness only knows how they’ll cope in high season. But it was kind of fun, in a masochistic way, and then we were off, and all you could hear was the sound of huffing and puffing. My ankle was well bandaged, and behaved impeccably. And in less time than I thought, we were here.

I just love it in this valley, in all its moods. We’ve been pelted with snow here, soaked, sunburned and everything in between. Today, it was surprisingly quiet, with just the sound of the Northern Wheatears, who have a couple of fledglings…

We could hear marmots whistling, but didn’t see any this time – everywhere seems extremely green, and so most animals are making the most of this sudden largesse after yesterday’s rain. Even the Hangerer (the highest peak around here) is greening up.

The bowl carved by the original Rotmoos glacier is really apparent in this shot, but the glacier itself has retreated further and further, even in the twenty years that we’ve been visiting. People used to be able to walk down from the Hohe Mut (on the left) and cross the glacier. Now it’s practically disappeared.

But somethings are the same, like these gentians for example, with what I think is Alpine Milk Vetch in the background. The lichen is pretty cool too.

And here are the little ‘hairdos’ of the Mountain Avens (Geum montanum)

And the Haflinger horses are here – I don’t know what happened to the ones that were hanging out in the centre of the village a few days ago, but these horses were having a wonderful time…

And then, fortified with strudel and Almdudler, it was time to head back down to catch the scary electric bus. The weather has certainly brightened up, and there’s time for one last look down the valley before we leave.

On the other side of the river, there’s the Seene Platte – we managed to get up there about twenty years ago, and have never managed it since, what with one thing and another. Maybe next year….

So, one more day to go before we head back to London, and the heat, and the crowds. I love it, but this fortnight always feels like a real chance to re-group and re-fortify, even if I do seem to insist on falling over. Maybe it’s nature’s way of telling me to slow down, and it’s certainly worked.

Dear Readers, I can’t complain as we’ve had glorious weather during our time in Obergurgl, but this morning we awoke to pouring rain and clouds as far as the eye could see. To add insult to injury, it’s the Glacier Trail Run starting on Thursday, so all the buses start from a few hundred yards away from their usual spot, necessitating a gallop along the main road. Never mind! When in doubt head down the valley, where the weather is often different. It’s always good to visit the Pfarrkirke in Längenfeld. We’d been here before on a very similar day, and had admired the inside, which is very over the top. This time, I really wanted to have a look at the surrounding graveyard. As in all the Tyrolean graveyards that I’ve seen, this one is immaculately kept, and a real tribute to the metalworkers’ art.

I was intrigued by one grave which, rather than having a metalwork cross, or a stone headstone, had a resin rainbow. This was for a little boy named Hugo Delarosa, who lived for 14 days. The graves of children always make me deeply sad.

What also makes me sad are the war memorials. This one has photos of all of the dead soldiers from local villages, which helps to make them individuals, not just names. But to take one name: if you zoom in on the photo below, you’ll see that four men from the Schöpf family died in the 1914-18 war.

In the Second World War, a further nine Schöpf men were killed, mostly on the Eastern front. Without being a history expert, I suspect that on an English war memorial, you would see whole ‘bands of brothers’ wiped out in the First World War, but not as many casualties in the Second World War. Austrian men fought on both the Eastern front and in the Italian Alps in World War II, and it looks as if some of the Schöpf men were also killed in Finland.

Thinking of my own dead, I went inside the church to light some candles, as I always do. So many, over the past few years, all still beloved and living on in my memories.

And, from the sublime to the ridiculous – we had a little while before our bus home, so we stopped at the Backerei, only to be told it was closing in three minutes. Aaargh! But I can heartily recommend Café Christoph across the road.

It bakes its own cakes, and the cheesecake was up there with the best I’ve ever tasted. Prost!

Well Readers, after ten days of beautiful weather we had to have a less settled day at some point, and today was the day. Fortunately we’d decided to have a quiet day to give my poor ankle a bit more time to heal, and so we caught the bus up to the Timmelsjoch pass. This pass, at 2474 metres, marks the divide between Austria and the Italian South Tyrol, and in the Middle Ages ‘basket carriers’ would transport up to 100 kgs of wine, pork, flax, lard and vinegar from one side of the mountains to another. These days you can hop on a bus and be at the top in about 30 minutes.

In a normal year we would walk back down to the Sahnestuberl, but a descent of some 1000 metres didn’t feel sensible on a damaged leg. The path runs from behind the Rasthaus (above), and starts very narrow and rocky, followed by a bit of more gentle descent, and culminating in a very scary scramble down through the woods at a ligament-busting angle. I was very frustrated not to be walking down but sometimes one has to be sensible. Harrumph. Still, we stopped at the rustic restaurant at the top for a cuppa and some berry cake, which we ate so fast I didn’t stop to take a photo. Sorry, cake fans! And then I checked the bus timetable for the return journey, and just as well I did, because there was either a bus at 11.10, or one at 13.40, and that’s quite a long time to hang around, even with cake.

And by now it had started to rain, so that made for an entertaining ride back down to Obergurgl…

Cows with little road sense….

Various mountain sheep..

The Smuggler’s memorial…

And then the sun came out, and we were back in Obergurgl, only to find that the tiny meadow next to the Pic NIc has gained some new inhabitants..

Three fine Haflinger horses, and one small pony with a very fetching hair-do.

The Haflingers are all wearing some kind of fly protection – the flies down here can be infernal. Not sure why the little pony doesn’t get some headgear as well. Haflingers are a true Tyrolean breed, and are hardy, versatile and long-lived. The Haflingers in Obergurgl breed every year, and you can often find them on the mountain pastures, living semi-wild during the summer.

And then it’s back to the Hotel Olympia for a sandwich and a nap. What a life! Some of the meadows are still uncut, and the mix of flowers changes every day. There’s a lot of Tufted Vetch about at the moment, making puddles of lilac-blue amongst the yellow of the Hawkweeds and Trefoils, and the white of the Ox Eye Daisies…

Dear Readers, another glorious day dawned, and yet again we decided to curtail our plans a little because my ankle is still all the colours of the rainbow, and a bit stiff to boot (no pun intended). And so, we got the bus down to the Sahnestuberl, site of many a large piece of cake, and with stunning self-control we walked on past, to take what was described as ‘an easy path’ down to the village of Zwieselstein. Well, it was an easy path by Austrian standards but still involved the usual combination of tree roots, rocks, steep and narrow uphill and steep and narrow and slippery downhill, so I consider myself very pleased to have accomplished it. It really is the most beautiful walk in spite of its occasionally precipitous nature.

It was nice to have a bit of shady tree cover too. The Nutcrackers were making one hell of a racket, and we spotted one youngster chasing its parents through the trees and screeching for food. It takes a lot of pinenuts to keep one of these birds happy, clearly. No photos unfortunately, I was much too busy keeping my eyes on where my feet were going.

The butterflies this year have been absolutely stunning. Most are too fast for me to capture on film, but if they’re going to sit still, it will be on a thistle. I wonder if I could get a thistle garden going in the front of the house? The white mark on the underside of the wing makes me think the butterfly is some kind of Grayling, but there are those who will have a much better idea, I’m sure. The butterfly was sharing this thistle with a bumblebee and a couple of flies. How lovely to have such a variety of insect life in one place.

Anyhow, soon we arrived in the village of Zwieselstein. We were passed by a gentleman wearing lederhosen and a feather in his hat, and he was powering up the hill with two walking poles, an expression of absolute joy on his face. Clearly, this was a man for whom the mountain held no fears. The same could not be said for his two female companions, however, who were a considerable distance further back on the path, and had the gritted teeth and furrowed brows of those proceeding with grim determination. So often it’s the case that there are different attitudes to physical discomfort in the same party, and I sometimes wonder if the story told to people new to the Alps has neglected to mention all that going uphill business. It’s all very well in theory, but rather different when it’s hot, and dusty, and you’re a considerable distance from an Almdudler. Still, you either grow to love this place or you don’t, and for those who don’t, there’s always somewhere less taxing, like Kitzbuhel. Or even Vienna.

By now my foot was complaining, so we got the bus into good old Solden. There was no Almdudler in the cafe where we stopped, but there was a Tyrolean equivalent – it’s a bit sweeter, but nonetheless very welcome.

And in my quest to work my way through the many strudels of Austria, today was Topfenstrudel, which features sweetened cream cheese, and very nice it was too, especially with a great jug of custard.

Dear Readers, one of the ‘easy’ walks around Obergurgl is through the Arolla Pine Forest, which largely consists of Arolla pines (Pinus cembra), with a few larch trees thrown in lower down. It’s a wonderful walk with a bit of uphill and a bit of downhill, and on a fresh sunny day it’s a great way to get one’s mountain legs back after a bit of a tumble. Alas, many, many other people thought the same thing, and so the path was full of people of various ages and stages of fitness all trying to sort themselves out on the narrow, twisty and sometimes precipitous path. Fortunately, most people (including us) are happy to stand aside for those frisky youngsters who are running up in plimsolls, and the people working their way up with two poles and a lot of determination will also make way. We stood aside for one really lovely couple who had gotten part way and decided the path was too tricky – the husband was partially sighted, and negotiating all the differences in surface, from soil to rocks to scree, was too much. It makes me humble to see how people give these things a go, and are sensible enough to know what’s too much. There’s a lesson there for me, I think, I’m much too inclined to push ahead even when things are too tricky. Being stubborn sometimes helps, but being silly doesn’t.

Last year we got turned back by a herd of cows coming down the path, but no bovines today! Instead, just the sound of many birds, including the cawing of the Nutcracker, who plants all the stray trees that you can see scattered across the landscape, much as the Jay in the UK is responsible for the spread of a lot of oak woodland. And a Crossbill too! And a Willow Tit!

We get to the top, and sit for a while looking at the bog where a fellow resident at the hotel, a dragonfly enthusiast, managed to spot four species of those splendid insects. I was just glad for a sit down.

Well, by now my ankle had had quite enough of that going uphill stuff and wanted to do some going downhill, so we headed off to the Zirbenalm for, astonishingly, my first Apfelstrudel mit Vanillesauce (custard !) of the holiday.

Pre-custard

Custard Deployed!

And on the way back, we stopped to talk to the Alpine blue cattle calves who are in their own little pen. They really are the most attractive of cattle, and always remind me of teddy bears.

And then it’s home, for a nap and a bath and to contemplate what to have for dinner tonight. And a few Ibuprofen to take the edge of my ankle.

Kestrel in flight

Well Readers, as you might imagine I was feeling a bit down in the dumps after my fall yesterday, but it was an excellent opportunity to sit outside and pay attention to what was going on. The two kestrels who nested at the Hotel Olympia have returned, although I’ve seen no sign of chicks – they raised three last year, so maybe they’re having a year off. Here are a few photos from last year, so I’ll see if I can do a bit better this year.

But I spent half an hour on the balcony photographing the sunset, and here are the edited highlights. I love the ways that the colours changed. No photoshop jiggerypokery or messing with the colours, I promise.

A helicopter was searching on both sides of the valley – I hope someone hadn’t had a fall or been taken ill on the higher paths around here. Interestingly (to me at least) most ordinary travel insurance doesn’t cover you for the higher altitudes around here (the village of Obergurgl is already at 1930metres, so most walks will be higher than that, so we take out insurance with the Austrian Alpine Association, which will whisk you off in a helicopter in the event of disaster.

Anyhow, I had a surprisingly excellent night’s sleep, and although my ankle is now painted in colours reminiscent of the photo above, it wasn’t too sore. So, we decided to head off to the lift over the Rettenbach Glacier, the ‘Schwarze Schneid’, translated by Wikipedia as ‘The Outer Black Cutting’, which is a little strange. Anyhoo, it’s the highest point achievable by lift in. the Oetzal Valley (at 3255 metres), has the longest ski run in Austria, at 15 kilometres, and slope 31 has a maximum gradient of 65 degrees. Blimey. Anyhow, we got the Glacier Bus up to the lift station. You can see how parts of the glacier are protected by what I always think of as waterproof duvets – these are becoming more and more prominent in the Austrian Alps, as climate change takes its toll.

It’s always important to suss out the refuelling options before you head up in the lift. The ‘Market Place Restaurant’ here is cavernous, but then it would need to be to deal with the thousands of skiers who visit in the winter season.

The last time I went up this particular lift was in the 1990s, believe it or not – my initial visit to Obergurgl was with another chap that I dated for nearly eight years. In those days, the lift was not a gondola but a single chair lift, and very scary it was too. Normally, this lift is closed when we’re in Obergurgl and its sister lift, over the Tieffenbach glacier, is open instead. This year, the Tieffenbach lift is getting some much-needed refurbishment, so we had the opportunity to see what this lift was like.

The lift is in two parts, but there wasn’t much need to get off at the middle station, and so we went straight to the top. It’s surprising how breathless those few hundred metres of altitude can make one.

The windows on the gondola were very scratched, so not many photo opportunities while we were actually travelling, but it was interesting to see the patterns that wind and water had made on the glacier below.

And so, we headed off for a tea and a slice of Black Forest gateau, and then caught the bus back down. And now I’m back at the Hotel Olympia with my leg raised. Hopefully I’ll be back in full operational order soon!

Well, Readers, on a glorious sunny day we set off for the Arolla Pine Forest here in Obergurgl, intending to walk up through the trees to the Schonweisse hut (just opened today) and then along the Rotmoos valley, home of many a marmot. Alas, in spite of walking much trickier paths when we went to Am Beilstein, today I managed to fall over in the smallest of depressions, conveniently just before the Zirben Alm. There’s nothing broken, but as usual my ankle has puffed up alarmingly, so it’s back home for the usual RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation). I’m not falling over as often as I was (and as falls go this one is relatively minor) but it is upsetting and annoying. Not being able to feel my feet properly means that I don’t make the automatic corrections for uneven terrain that I used to, so the slightest lapse of attention is enough to send me tumbling over.

Still, it’s not all bad – I have actually finished a book (Emily Wilson’s ‘Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea’, in which she talks about the relevance of classical literature to today’s world, and gives a number of interesting insights into the whole process of translation). The kestrels are nesting not far from our balcony, and I can hear them chatting away to one another as I write. The meadows are being harvested, which is sad in one way but is what keeps them so biodiverse, and also feeds the local cattle, giving their milk a subtle sweet herbaceous taste.

The photo at the top of this piece shows the lights in our room – they’re very splendid, but we regularly collide with them as we spring up from the sofa. I wonder if it’s a coincidence that once struck with a misplaced head they make a sound like cowbells?

Meadows being harvested – view from my balcony window

Yesterday, I forgot to mention that the cows at the Giggisjoch lift were all clustered around somebody’s car, rubbing up against it and licking it with great enthusiasm. What is it about cows and cars? When I was a child, we’d go to Wanstead Flats to feed the ducks, and there were often cows there (it was common land and they roamed around for most of the year). Once, we saw a female cow mounting a Mini carwith great enthusiasm, while the unfortunate driver and his passenger were trapped inside. Hormones clearly have a lot to answer for! And I have no recollection of how Dad explained what was going on, though knowing him I suspect he’d have said that the cow was ‘playing’.