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!