Dear Readers, I’m still feeling a bit under the weather (plus we have storms and rain forecast for later in the day) and so we decided to take a walk around the Arolla Pine Forest. Arolla pines (Pinus cembra) are extremely slow-growing trees: it can take them 30 years to reach more than a metre tall, and 50 years before they reach sexual maturity. However, they can live for a thousand years – some of the trees in this forest will have seen extraordinary changes in this scrap of woodland. The soil is extremely poor, but the pines survive with help from mycorrhizal fungi of various kinds.

This is a tightly-knit ecosystem – the nutcracker (Nucifraga caryocatactes), a kind of jay, caches the Arolla pine nuts that are its main food, much as the Eurasian jay ‘plants’ acorns as winter food. Some of these pine nuts will germinate, and if you look at the hillsides of Obergurgl you will often see lone pines, or small groups of trees, that have emerged from those forgotten food stores. We heard the nutcrackers cackling in the trees, but they are shy and difficult to photograph, so here’s a lovely photo from someone more speedy than me.

 Nutcracker (Photo by bbartlomiej, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

The soil in the forest is not only poor, but also acidic, hence the alpenroses, which are actually a kind of rhododendron.

Another favourite plant of mine is this butterwort – its leaves are slightly sticky and capture small insects. Well, when you live in a nutrient-poor environment you need to take your food wherever you find it.

I have no idea what this white plant is, help! It’s very striking with its chocolate-coloured foliage and double flowers. and I’m thinking it’s possibly a cow-wheat species.

And how about this beauty! It’s known as a small white orchid (Pseudorchis albida) and it’s the first time that I’ve ever seen one. Austria is wonderful for orchids of all kinds, and I hope to spot a few more once I’m firing on all cylinders again.

Ants are a very important part of the forest ecosystem – the seeds of many plants include fatty sacks called eliasomes, which the ants eat, and which encourage them  to take the seeds into their nests where conditions are ideal for germination. The narrow-headed ant (Formica exsecta) travelled south from Sweden after the Ice Age, and has now established itself in the Arolla forest. There are a few colonies in the UK too, but it’s vanishingly rare.  Unlike the wood ants, which are also found in Austria, the narrow-headed ant makes very small, shallow mounds less than a foot high. Something had obviously disturbed these ants, who were very excited. Maybe a bird had been pecking at the nest shortly before we came along.

And so we head back down through the wood. I am not yet up to my mountain-goat levels of agility (ahem) and so we took it nice and easy, stopping to let people powering up the hill go past (as is only good manners in the Tyrol) and saying ‘Grüss Gott’ to anyone within hearing range. I am very pleased with my orchid spotting, and, as I look out of the window at what is basically a white-out of cloud and pouring rain, I am very glad that today we weren’t more ambitious. But I can feel all the worries of the past few months starting to fall away. The mountains have a way of doing that.

View towards Hochgurgl from Obergurgl

Dear Readers, I suppose it was entirely predictable but I woke up this morning with a sore throat and runny nose – all that stress before I left, coupled with a packed airplane full of people sneezing, has clearly given me a cold. But it does mean that I had a perfect excuse to take things easy today, and the morning was beautiful, so we headed off across the meadows to see what we could see.

And then we heard a familiar high-pitched whistle, and looked around to see an irate marmot about 100 feet away. I’ve never seen them here before, and in fact it’s been a sterling few days for spotting these Alpine rodents – I’ve seen four already, and I’d normally be lucky to see that many in a fortnight. They literally vibrate with fury when they see a walker/dog/sheep/cow. I hope this one soon settled down, it must take a lot of energy to be so hypervigilant. Their main enemies are eagles (not too many  this far down the valley), foxes (I’ve never seen a fox in Obergurgl, but there used to be a stuffed one in our hotel, so presumably they’re around) and probably also off-lead dogs, though people are generally very strict with their hounds, what with all the lifestock that’s about.

Marmot!

Speaking of livestock, it was a delight to see that the herd of Highland Cattle that live in a nearby field are increasing in number. I’m pretty sure that this is a hobby herd,  and that the animals live out their lives here. Very handsome they are too.

But of course the main attraction is the flora around here. Look at this rampion, for example – there are many different species in the Alps so I’m not hazarding a guess about species. They’re members of the Campanula family, but don’t look much like any bellflower that I’ve ever seen.

Then we have my personal favourite, the melancholy thistle. It’s just coming into flower, and who could resist those magenta puffball flowers?

Then there are these beautiful Alpine poppies. These are, I think, Papaver alpinum ssp Rhaeticum – found only in this part of the Alps, they’re orange or yellow rather than the normal white, and very pretty too. These were growing right on the edge of the Hochgurgl lift carpark, where I’d spotted them a few years ago.

And how about this plant? It looks very like a type of catchfly to me, and in fact the closest match that I can see is Nottingham catchfly (Silene nutens).  Feel free to chip in if you’ve got any idea!

And there are the usual clouds of butterflies and moths, like the small tortoiseshell below…

And this swallowtail which landed for approximately half a second before heading off, goodness knows where.

Anyhow, by this time I was feeling a bit ropey so we headed up to the Hochgurgl  Lift Station to get a bus back  to Obergurgl. We used to love getting the lift from here up to the space-age Top Mountain Star, but apparently it hasn’t run in summer since 2019. Why, might you ask. Well, therein hangs a tale. The people who own the Hochgurgl life and Top Mountain Star also own  a motorcycle museum  a few miles away,  on the way to the Timmelsjoch pass. A few years  ago, the museum, containing the life-long collection of the owner, burned down,  so he has spent time and money salvaging what could be saved  and no doubt buying new bikes. So now,  he wants people to visit the museum, and so he has opened a life there, alongside the museum and the very highly-rated cafe. At least, this is the story in the village and I can imagine that, after the hardships of lockdown, followed by the landslide in 2021 that cut the village off from June to August, everyone is looking for a way to survive and to recoup some of the money they’ve lost. I will definitely visit later in the week, and report back.

The Top Mountain Star in winter

For now, though, we get the bus back to Obergurgl, head up to the Hohe Mut for some goulasch souppe, and of course take  a few photos, arriving back just in time to avoid the loudest thunderstorm that I’ve heard for quite some time. Let’s hope that I’m feeling a bit less ‘bunged up’ tomorrow.

View from the Hohe Mut, with the Rotmoos valley to the right, and the Gaislach valley to the left.

Dear Readers, after a one and a half hour delay on our outward bound flight to Innsbruck (the incoming flight was from Paris and as we know, France is having a few problems at the moment) it was such a delight to get through customs, bag retrieval and transfer to Obergurgl. Incidentally, if you are ever travelling by Easyjet avoid the middle seats if you fancy a snack (round about rows 17-19) – for the second time running, by the time the trollies get to the middle of the plane there is nothing left but Pringles. There are worst fates than Pringles, of course, and all the sensible people had bought food beforehand (including an ill-advised tuna and chickpea salad).

I was a bit worried about how getting through passport control would go, now that we’re no longer part of Europe, but on this trip at least there were plenty of border guards, and I now have the requisite stamp in my passport to make sure that I don’t stay for more than ninety days. And the baggage sailed into view, unlike our last but one visit when John’s luggage stayed firmly in Gatwick.

We are staying at the Hotel Olympia – we used to stay here until, in 2013, they decided that they would take the summers off and do some renovation, and who could blame them? However, there seems to be a concerted effort to turn Obergurgl back into a summer resort. We talked to Evie, one of the owners of the hotel, and were impressed by how much effort she was putting into making the place more climate-friendly. For one thing, she is trying to reduce plastic use at breakfast, so there are some very neat jam machines instead of the usual endless little plastic packages, and she is serving yoghurt in re-usable glass jars instead of plastic tubs.

It has been very hard for all the hotels here: first there was Covid, then in 2021 the whole village was cut off for the whole early part of the summer by a landslide, which meant that all the food and medications for the villagers had to be brought in by helicopter. And until Monday we are the only guests at the hotel. I do hope that some more people turn up soon, lovely as it is to be so spoiled. In all my years of travel, I have never had a hotel to myself.

Anyhow, what is wonderful is that there appears, finally, to be no major building work anywhere in the village, after years of cranes and pile-drivers and earth-movers and, on one stay, dynamite which was being used to create an underground car park for all the skiers. No one can say that the villagers of Obergurgl aren’t keen to maximise on their undoubted advantages – the place is renowned for family skiing (lots of gentle slopes for children and beginners) along with some very challenging runs for the more daring amongst us. Me, I just love walking in the mountains rather than zipping down them, but each to their own.

Much of the building work last time related to the demolition of the old ‘town hall’ and the creation of a new, much bigger one, that would be used to host conventions and conferences – Obergurgl is a centre for glaciation studies as you might expect, what with the glaciers visibly vanishing during the time that I’ve been visiting (my first visit was probably around 1994). The new place looks very modern, but we’ll visit tomorrow to see the presentation about Obergurgl through the seasons that we’ve been to see every year. It was always hosted by Michael, the village walking guide, and his Dad Albert, and we saw them both today, not looking a day older in spite of us not having been here since 2019. I wish we could say the same for us.

The Gurgl Carat, the new ‘town hall’

In front of it is the memorial to balloonists Auguste Piccard and Paul Kipfer, and their rescuer, Hans Falkner, who organised the retrieval of the scientists after the balloon  crash landed on the Gurgler Ferner glacier in 1931. The balloon had reached a height of 15,785 metres, the very edge of the stratosphere, an amazing accomplishment. and the rescue suddenly put Obergurgl ‘on the map’.

Photo Anton-kurt, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

I have to share this photo of Piccard and Kipfer before their historic flight, if only for their improvised crash helmets. They were both extremely brave, and Piccard went on to design the bathyscope for underwater exploration. He was clearly an innovative inventor.

Piccard and Kipfer beside the balloon which would take them to the edge of the stratosphere.

Last time we were here, the church spire had taken a knock from one of the cranes, but it looks nicely repaired now.

Anyhow, we headed up to the Hohe Mut via the cable car (no point in getting too ambitious on Day One) and spotted a pair of marmots grazing alongside one of the paths. It looks as if the plants are a few weeks behind where they usually are – the Alpenroses (a kind of azalea) are only just coming into bloom, and I suspect the marmots are just waking up from their hibernation and are hungry. I didn’t get a photo of them this time, but I will see what I can do later in the week.

It was cloudy at the Hohe Mut, but look at these fantastic golden retrievers.

And we bumped into two friends that we hadn’t seen since 2018, G and D – they both look well but have both suffered health challenges and the loss of people dear to them since we saw them, as have we of course. It was lovely to see them looking so well now, and we agreed that there is something about this little mountain village that seems to get under your skin – like us, they had visited other places in the Alps, but nowhere seems to tick all the boxes like Obergurgl.

A view along the Rotmoos Valley from the Hohe Mut.

It’s always a bit strange taking the first cable car of the holiday – they are so quiet, and there you are, dangling above a precipitous drop with lots of lovely hard rocks below. It’s even more fun if it’s windy. But once the first trip is out of the way, it seems to just come naturally.

Heading back down from the Hohe Mut

I was a little worried that the meadows, such a high point for me (no pun intended) would already have been mown, as they had been further down the valley, but they are currently splendid, so biodiverse and so full of bees, butterflies and various other pollinators. Here’s a small selection of photos.

Melancholy thistle

Hemp agrimony

Red and white clover

Yellow rattle (important for reducing the fertility of a meadow and so keeping the perennial ‘weeds’ such as dock and thistle under control)

Some kind of yellow compositae (possibly hawkbit/catsear)

Field scabious

Early Marsh Orchid (I think)

Meadow bistort (Bistorta officinalis)

Red campion

And of course, it wouldn’t be Obergurgl without some Tyrolean Grey Cattle. The older calves have been separated from their mothers, but are far from being newborns – I hope that they have a lot more time with their parent than calves in more intensive systems have.

And so, after an easy first day involving Radler (shandy to you and me) and some Tyrolean  spinach and cheese ravioli, it’s home for a rest. I can’t believe that we’re finally here, and yet it feels as if we’ve never been away.

Dear Readers, by the time you read this I will hopefully be on holiday in Obergurgl, the highest village in Austria at 6,330 feet. How I have missed this place! We last visited in 2019, before all that Covid shenanigans started, and it will be interesting to see how it’s changed – there were shedloads of building projects on our last trip, and a general move towards making Obergurgl a winter-only resort. What a shame that would be! Although the winter season is the most lucrative, the walking in the summer is extraordinary, with routes in every direction. The meadows are full of flowers early in the year, and they are a great draw for me personally for sure.

The walking here is not ‘easy’ but there are a number of routes for those of us who spend too much time during the year hunched over our computers (that would be me), plus some more ambitious ones for ‘proper’ year-round walkers. Like the route up Hangerer for example, the highest mountain in the immediate vicinity. In the winter, people walk up and then ski down, and by people I mean ‘over-achievers’.

View towards Hangerer

I love the local domestic animals too, the Tyrolean blue cattle and the Italian floppy-eared sheep, who spend the summer on the Austrian side of the Alps. Plus the local families breed the beautiful Haflinger palomino horses, who also spend the summer ‘wild’ in the valleys.

So, news that my heart is basically ok was such a blessing. I intend to walk, eat strudel, spot plants and birds and generally do all the things I’ve been yearning to do since the last time I was here four years ago. And of course, I’ll be reporting back here, as time and bandwidth and strudel consumption allow. Fingers crossed for reasonable weather, not too many blisters, and some peace and quiet.

Dear Readers, you were all so supportive when I announced that I had a ‘dicky ticker’ as Monsieur Alphonse used to say in unreconstructed BBC comedy  ‘Allo ‘Allo that I wanted to send you a quick update. The echocardiogram did confirm that I am the proud possessor of a bicuspid aortic valve, but my GP decided to see if she could find a cardiologist to tell her a bit more about how bad it was, based on the report. At the moment there’s a three-month waiting list to see someone if you have a heart problem, and as I am off on holiday shortly (more details tomorrow) she wanted to check what I could and couldn’t do, and what I should be aware of.

And at this point envisage unicorns and rainbows, because not only did my GP manage to get hold of a helpful cardiologist (a feat in itself considering how overworked everyone in the NHS is) but the consultant said that the report showed that my heart was currently working well, and that all that was required was a routine referral to cardiology, followed by an annual echocardiogram to ensure that all is still well. The cardiologist apparently finished the call by saying ‘tell your patient to go off and enjoy her holiday’.

So that’s exactly what I intend to do, and what a relief! I will still, of course, be sensible and build up gradually to anything strenuous, but at least it looks as if open-heart surgery is not immediately on the cards, and the prognosis for anyone with a bicuspid aortic valve, with monitoring and treatment, is as good as it is for anyone else.

So, while I’m not a great fan of real fireworks, here is a photo from Vancouver, which just about sums up how I feel.

Photo by Larry Chen from Vancouver, Canada, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Common carder bumblebee on Cirsium rivulare var atropurpureum

Dear Readers, regular followers of the blog will know that when I go to the garden centre, I am always led by the bees and what they’re feeding on. And on this lovely sunny day they were out in force. First up, the common carders were all over this rather lovely thistle, which as far as I know is only known by its Latin name – I’ve tried to grow it several times but it doesn’t like either my sunny front garden or my shady back garden, so I’ve given up for now. I am growing some melancholy thistles though, so let’s see how they do.

Mason bee (???) on Rosanne geranium

This little bee was something of a challenge – superficially it looks like a common carder but it’s rather less stocky in build. Species geraniums like ‘Rosanne’ are excellent for pollinators, as opposed to the cheap and cheerful red geraniums that dangle from balconies and are no use to bees at all. I would love to start a campaign to persuade pubs to change their hanging baskets and windowboxes from petunias and geraniums to something more bee-friendly but of course the plants would also have to be robust, drought-proof and long-flowering, so I do see the problem. Maybe this pub in Muswell Hill had the right idea….

Anyhow, back to the garden centre. Scabious is always a big favourite with the bees, and this bumblebee was thoroughly enjoying the nectar.

Someone mentioned Salvia as being their favourite plant family, and the garden centre was absolutely full of them – so many varieties, and so different! The bees always seem most attracted to the blue and purple ones in my experience, and this variety (new to me) was a particular magnet.

Salvia ‘Mystic Spires’

And finally, it was all happening by the Nemesia. I never think of it being particularly attractive to bees but clearly I was wrong – our little friend the four-banded flower bee was patrolling a huge patch of the flowers and defending them against bumblebees four times his size, very impressive. It might all appear to be idyllic in the garden but there are ferocious battles going on – this bee is hoping both to mate with any female four-banded flower bees who turn up, and to make sure that no interlopers take over his patch. It’s hard work when there’s so much to do in the way of reproduction, and so little time to get it done in.

Bee to the left of the central flower spike (in front of the wooden slat)

Bee taking a second away from guard duty to have a feed (centre, purple flower)

And so, dear Readers, you might be wondering what I bought, and you might be surprised that the answer is, on this occasion, absolutely nothing. And the reason is that shortly I will be off on an adventure (no, not a heart operation, no one is that quick), and I will be telling you all about it very soon. In the meantime, this was an admiration and reconnaissance visit only, and it took some self-control, I can tell you.

For those of you who live in North London, just a heads up that this is the Sunshine Garden Centre, not far from Bounds Green tube station, and a real delight – the staff are always so helpful, the range of plants is great, and for anyone over 60 you can get 10% off. Plus there’s a café which is always a bonus. Do drop in if you’re in the vicinity.

Ribbed melilot (Melilotus officinalis)

Dear Readers, you might remember that I found this plant in a tree-pit a few days ago and so I thought I’d do some digging and find out a bit more about it. I suspect that it has arrived in a wildflower seed mix, but it arrived in the UK in about 1835, probably via North America, though as it is originally from south east Europe it may well have made its own way here over time. Ribbed melilot is a member of the pea and bean family (Fabaceae), and there are several similar species – tall melilot is, well, taller, and then there’s a white version, called imaginatively white melilot. All of them are popular with pollinators, but ribbed melilot in particular has a high nectar content – honeybee hives are sometimes placed close to melilot fields, and can produce up to 200 pounds of honey per year. 

I keep changing my mind about my favourite plant family – one day it’s the carrot family, with Queen Anne’s lace and wild carrot and angelica and all those other fluffy, useful flowers. Then it’s the brassicas, the origin of so many foodplants and with such useful plants for insects as well, such as garlic mustard for the orange-tip butterflies. On balance it’s probably the peas and beans, because of their variety, and the way that they improve the soil, but it’s quite possible that I’ll change my mind again. Do you have a favourite type of plant? Do share. There are so many candidates, all contributing to the ecosystem in their own particular way.

Red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) on ribbed melilot (Photo by By Ivar Leidus – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50238435)

Also known as sweet clover, the melilots are also known as sweet clover, and contain a chemical called coumarin which is responsible for the sweet smell of hay – although the odour is delicious, the taste is bitter, and it’s thought that coumarin acts as a deterrent to grazing animals. However, the chemical can be converted to a potent anticoagulant by some fungi, which can cause sweet clover disease if cattle are fed the plant in silage or hay. However, the anticoagulant is also used as a rodenticide, which always sounds to me like a particularly unpleasant way for a rat or mouse to die. 

Photo by By AnRo0002 – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33379726

Before the advent of nitrogen fertilisers, ribbed melilot was used as a green manure, and was ploughed back into fields so that its nitrogen content could improve the soil. These days, the plant is also used to ‘clean’ soils contaminated by dioxins, and it is also very drought-tolerant, a great feature in these uncertain times.

Various creatures eat the seeds of the melilot species, including game birds such as partidge and pheasant, and a whole raft of tiny moths and butterflies. The caterpillars of some Essex Skipper (Thymelicus lineola) butterflies seem to have taken a shine  to the plant, as have the larvae of the Clouded Yellow, a migratory butterfly that sometimes crops up on the coast, and the larvae of the Grass Eggar, a rare moth found pretty much exclusively on the south and west coasts. The moth is discreet and furry, but the caterpillar is clearly something of a dandy.

The caterpillar of the Grass Eggar moth (Lasiocampa trifolii) (see below for attribution)

Adult grass eggar moth (Photo By Donkey shot – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28434974)

And finally, for a poem, how about this one by Sappho? I am not sure that the translation quite does it justice (if it was me I would certainly be doing something about that garden grot, which has quite different connotations these days). Melilot  crops up a lot in her poetry (it is originally a southern European plant, as we’ve noted), with its hay-scented perfume, and flowers in general (and roses in particular) stand for female desire. Phaon was said to be Sappho’s (male) lover, and she was supposed to have thrown herself into the sea for the love of him. It’s all very confusing when, nowadays, we associate Sappho much more with her love for women, but then who said that humans had to be consistent? If you know more about Sappho and her love life than I do, fire away!

GOLDEN PULSE
Golden pulse grew on the shore,
Ferns along the hill,
And the red cliff roses bore
Bees to drink their fill;

Bees that from the meadows bring
Wine of melilot,
Honey-sups on golden wing
To the garden grot.

But to me, neglected flower,
Phaon will not see,
Passion brings no crowning hour,
Honey nor the bee.

Photo Credit

The caterpillar photo above has the following attribution –  No machine-readable author provided. Svdmolen assumed (based on copyright claims). – No machine-readable source provided. Own work assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=845999)