There has been much talk this week about water and boulders, so it seems appropriate that on our last day we take a walk beside the river Gurgl, as it runs from Obergurgl down to Solden. When we start the day, at the little hamlet of Zwieselstein, it’s already running along at a fair clip, full of the sediment that turns it a milky grey.

Later in its journey, the Gurgl turns into a category 4 white-water rafting river, but no one tries to navigate these waters. For one thing, it’s full of enormous, house-sized boulders.

For me, rocks like this have a kind of personality, albeit one that’s developed slowly, over millennia. This path is full of them, each with their own community of plants.

And what a cool, green path this is on a hot, humid day. I don’t know of anything else like it around here.

There is one tiny spot of grey beach, and someone has built themselves a little tepee amongst the boulders.

From the cliffs on the opposite side of the river, I see a beetle-browed face looking out.

Can you see the face?

We climb up over a promontory, into an area where the sun breaks through

And then,  it’s down a hill, and back into ‘civilisation’.

The Rosebay willow-herb is in full flower, as perhaps it might be along the edges of Coldfall Wood.

And as we cross a bridge, the waters from another stream join the Gurgl – the waters run alongside one another for a while, brown against grey.

Here in Solden, they have a penchant for covered bridges. Some are traditional…

..and some are modern.

And, as the Gurgl runs fiercely down the valley, to meet up with the river Inn (from which Innsbruck got its name) and than the Danube, and, finally, the Black Sea, so I must say goodbye to this place, for this year at least. Our two weeks has gone just as quickly as the river has, but I have loved sharing them with you. And now, I feel the itch to be back in my own bed, with my own things around me, and to see what’s been going on in my half-mile territory. So, after the fun of flying back into Gatwick tomorrow and lumping all our luggage home to East Finchley, I look forward to reporting back with the Wednesday Weed on 22nd July.

Until then, thanks for your support!

Dear Readers, yesterday we went for a walk in the Ferwalltaller, the last of the four valleys that lay directly above Obergurgl. Suffice to say that it was very, very hot, and very steep, and we both drank a pint of Applesaft gespritz (apple juice with soda water) when we finished. But look what has arrived, in the last few days – a brand new lamb, with umbilical cord still attached. She is much smaller than all the other young sheep, so I think she was born up here.

I love how her legs look too long for her body, and how her mother is keeping an eye on her. I also love how these sheep follow anyone with a walking pole, in the hope of a bite of sandwich.

Mr Bugwoman pursued by sheep

One of the sheep has found the perfect answer to overheating – try laying down in a patch of snow.

But, that was yesterday. Today, we decided to take it a bit easier and get the bus up to the Tiefenbach glacier. The road climbs up to 2820 metres above sea level, and passes through a tunnel blasted out of the mountain which is nearly 2 miles long. When you get there, there is a very fine carpark, and restaurant, and cable car (as usual). At this time of year, the glacier itself looks a bit exhausted and grimy. It’s the only spot in the Oetzal valley where you could still do a spot of skiing if the urge came upon you.

A bit of glacier next to the car park

The entrance to the tunnel through the mountain

We board a cable car, and head up to the top. While all these ski slopes and restaurants and car parks feel like a desecration of the mountains, you don’t have to look far to see what a tiny proportion of the Austrian Alps are used for these purposes, and how much remains untouched.

The Austrians seem to love inducing vertigo in their tourists. Well it works for me. No way I’m walking out on that thing…

Just call me Wusswoman….

And for any cable car enthusiasts, here is the Top Station

And some cable cars…

So, once we’d wandered round and admired the scenery, we headed back down for lunch. I ended up with Germknodel mit vanille sauce – in other words, an enormous dumpling filled with prune puree, with poppyseeds on the top and some custard. Well, as I’m vegetarian, it was that or chips. And look at these very fine curtains, showing Alpine scenes!

So, we headed back down into the village of Solden, or ‘Sin City’ as it’s known in these parts due to its Table Dancing establishments (two, open only in winter) and its bars. These are something of a shock after Obergurgl, which prides itself on its clean and healthy living. Having said which, this is still rural Austria. I imagine that the goings-on are relatively tame.

A table-dancing establishment

A table-dancer

As we sit sipping a coffee, we notice a cortage of Porsches parked up opposite.

The drivers get out for a chat. From here, there are only two routes – into Obergurgl (and then out again because that’s where the road runs out) or over the Timmelsjoch pass, with its 28 hairpin bends, into Italy. I imagine that they’ll be off for a pasta lunch.

Off we go!

I wish them luck with trying to keep their yellow/black/white/black/yellow colour order when they have to get past buses/cyclists/motorbikes on those twisty roads. Oh, and yesterday a lorry got stuck going over the Timmelsjoch so no-one could get past in either direction for six hours. The idea of driving a convertible, with the wind in your hair, and the reality of being stuck behind an articulated lorry round 28 hairpins is something to consider.

So, we head for home, and pass this sculpture, made entirely out of bits of scrap metal, outside one of the hotels.

Scrap metal Ibex

I love the ingenuity that takes things that would otherwise be thrown away, and makes something beautiful out of them. And, as I haven’t seen an ibex on this visit, it’s good to see an  image of one.

Tomorrow is our last day in Obergurgl. How can two weeks have past so quickly?

Awned Yellow Rattle (Rhinanthus glacialis)

Dear Readers, as I have been walking amongst the Alpine meadows here in Obergurgl, one plant has appeared over and over again – Yellow Rattle. In some places, it forms a lemon mosaic amongst the clover and the vetches and the many other flowers.

If it looks a little familiar, it’s maybe because the UK also has two species of Yellow Rattle, Rhimnanthus minor and Rhimnanthus angustifolius.

Yellow rattle (Rhimnanthus minor) (“Yellow-rattle close 700” by Sannse – en.wikipedia.org: 19:07, 5. Jun 2004 . . Sannse (Talk) . . 700×925 (197710 Byte) (Yellow-rattle ). Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yellow-rattle_close_700.jpg#/media/File:Yellow-rattle_close_700.jpg)

All of the plants look superficially like a yellow Deadnettle, but they perform a very different role in maintaining the biodiversity of grasslands, one that has made gardeners with dreams of a meadow in their front garden pay out for Yellow Rattle seeds and plug plants. For this inoffensive-looking plant is a hemi-parasite – it is able to photosynthesize, but obtains at least some of its nutrients and water from the roots of other plants.

Here in Obergurgl, it means that the Yellow Rattle ‘preys’ on coarse grasses, nettles and perennial weeds like dock, much reducing their vigour and giving the other plants a chance. UK gardeners are realising that it does much the same thing in their own gardens, hence the sudden market in plants. Sadly, in the wild in the UK Yellow Rattle is somewhat in decline, a victim of the prevailing attitude that the only good meadow is a monoculture.

The plant is a member of the Figwort family, which includes such diverse species as Speedwells, Foxglove and our old friend, Ivy-leaved Toadflax. Why only Yellow Rattle has taken up the parasitic lifestyle is a mystery, but it certainly increases the range of plant species here. I would be very interested to know if any of my gardening readers have tried planting it, and what the results were!

Incidentally, the plant is known as Yellow Rattle because the black seeds rattle away in the seed cases. The plant is an annual which sets seed early in the year, before the first mowing up here in the mountains, and is hence ready and waiting when spring comes round again.

Now, Readers, let me tell you a true mountain story. Yesterday, a group of walkers set out, with a long-established mountain guide, to walk the path from the Tieffenbach glacier down into the village of Vent, which is next door to the Obergurgl valley. Amongst them were the two other couples staying at our hotel. It’s a long downhill walk, across snow and sometimes ice, but this was a well-equipped group who were used to such things. To me, it sounds like several hours of hell, but each to our own. Anyhow. They started to inch along a precipitous, snow-covered pass. As one of the women walked under an eight foot tall boulder which was half blocking the pass, she slipped on some ice, slid down the hill and scraped her leg. As everyone was helping her, the next man in line passed under the boulder, touching it with his hand, and, as he too slipped and fell down the hill, the boulder, which may have been in place for thousands of years, uprooted itself and started to roll down the slope towards the man. Everyone screamed as the boulder bounced and careered towards the prone man. A guide ran down the hill, at considerable risk to himself, but with little hope of getting their before the boulder did. And then, the boulder struck a tiny rock, less than a foot high, rocked forward, rocked back, and settled in its new position, just a few metres from where the man still lay.

I heard all this from the couples at breakfast this morning. The man who fell has some cuts and bruises and a sprained shoulder, but is otherwise ok.  The woman who saw it all happen was still in shock.

“I have never been so close to a disaster before”, she said, her eyes brimming. “The stone that stopped the boulder was so tiny. We couldn’t believe it when the boulder stopped rolling. It could all have been so different. There was no way that the man would have survived if that thing had landed on him.”

And so, dear Readers, I leave you to draw whatever moral, or none, you’d like to from this tale. For me, there’s some satisfaction in the notion of a little stone stopping a great juggernaut of a boulder. But maybe that’s just me.

The start of the path along the Konigstal

Dear Readers, today we decided to tackle the Konigstal, the fourth of the local valleys that reach out like fingers from Obergurgl. Unlike the other valleys, which involve a climb and then a nice gentle stroll, the Konigstal involves climbing and climbing and climbing. It’s about 600 metres from where we start to where we finish, which doesn’t sound much, but doesn’t account for all the scree and snow and streams that are involved in getting to the little hut where we always collapse in a heap.

Snow lasts for a long time in the Konigstal

I haven’t seen many bumblebees since I arrived in the Alps, but today there was a little group of three  who seemed to prefer to crawl over the flowers rather than fly – at this altitude I imagine that they want to save as much energy as possible. This species is, I believe, Bombus mendax, a purely Alpine species which has a conservation status of  Near Threatened, what with climate change and the fragmentation of Alpine habitats.

Up and up we trudge. The mountains surround us as if we were specimen at the bottom of a bowl.

Can you see that tiny speck on the horizon? That’s where we’re going…

Funny how it never seems to get any nearer.

And the nearest place for a coffee is up there, at the Top Mountain Star cafe, a mere 3084 metres above sea level….

So we traverse some snow, scramble up some scree and all of a sudden it all seems doable.

And then, after a final push, we arrive.

This used to be the old customs hut, for people bringing goods from Italy into Austria. Whole herds of sheep, sometimes with whiskey bottles strapped to their tummies, apparently sneaked past this hut at dead of night without the customs officer waking up. I rather suspect that some of the whiskey found its way into the customs officer’s tummy.

And look at this view back down.

Glory hallelujah.

The flowers up here are the high altitude species that don’t thrive anywhere else.

Bavarian Gentian (Gentiana bavarica)

And I was especially pleased to find these little beauties – they are Glacier Crowfoot, and can grow up to 4200 metres, so are some of the highest altitude plants in the Alps.

Glacier Crowfoot (Ranunculus glacialis)

And so, it’s time to head back down. All those hard-earned metres melt away as we skip like mountain goats back down the path (or, to be more accurate, plod down with an occasional heart-felt groan). When we get down a little lower, armies of Spiniest Thistle appear, waving their ‘arms’ like miniature triffids.

Our old friends, Spiniest Thistle. En masse.

And then, suddenly, we’re back on the main drag, walking back towards the Hochgurgl lift which will take us down for an Apfelsaft and a tea. We pass a small family group, who are conferring in German over a map. We manage to help them work out where all the paths go, but one woman holds back.

“Is it all like that?” she asks, gesturing at the path.

I realise that it probably does look rather daunting, as these things often do before you actually do them.

“About twenty-five percent of it is a little bit scary”, says my husband, “but the rest is fine”.

“It’s very beautiful”, I say.

“But I’m very scared”, she says.

And what can anyone say to that?

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I understand”.

And we turn away, to let them make their own decision. When we look back, it seems as if the father and one of the children has gone down, and the mother and another child, who is complaining bitterly, is heading back to the lift.

It’s so hard to beat our fears, sometimes. There are walks here that I certainly wouldn’t do – walks that are too exposed would not work for me. We all have our particular red lines, and this poor woman must have reached hers. Maybe she will gain in confidence over her holiday, but today this was just a step too far.

As we cross the last meadow, I notice a butterfly, and realise that it’s that great traveller, the Painted Lady. It’s already crossed the Atlas Mountains, and now it’s giving the Alps a go. How can such a fragile creature be so resilient, and so determined?

Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui)

The underside of the wings is almost as beautiful as the top.

And as we reach the lift, we pass a very interesting character.

The scariest water trough in the valley

The Tyroleans have a very singular sense of humour that often falls over into kitsch. But there is often a dark side too – I have seen several water troughs carved into faces, and the people here seem to love witches on broomsticks, dwarves, gnomes, and other such folk. This chap looks rather menacing to me, with his staring eyes and gaping mouth.  I think I might wait till later to get some water, thank you.

Well, after complaining about the heat yesterday, I should have guessed that the weather gods would take umbrage and provide one of those days when the clouds are below the tops of the mountains and the temperature drops ten degrees. But, as I have a twinge in one ankle, we decided to take it a bit easier today and pop down the valley to the town of Oetz, where they have a cable-car that we don’t visit very often.

The Ackerkogelbahn

Now, I generally like cable-cars and chairlifts and all the other ways of getting up steep hills quickly, but the Ackerkogelbahn is unusual in several respects. Firstly,  it’s an old lift, designed for the days when folk were shorter and nimbler, and so you have to duck your head very carefully when you get in to avoid a knock on the noggin. Secondly, this is one fast lift – you have about ten seconds to get in before the doors slam shut and off you go. So, you have to be both quick on your feet and physically flexible. Fortunately, we managed to get in without a hitch, and were just settling back and congratulating ourselves when, with a strange whirring sound, the whole thing came to a halt, above a vertiginous drop into a pine forest. This in itself is not a problem, except that the whole car bounced up and down in slow-motion like a yo-yo, which is most discomforting for the stomach. Up and down we went, like a boat wallowing in a heavy sea.

When you’re moving, it’s easy to forget that you’re suspended in a little pod on a piece of wire. When you stop, you become all too aware of the fact.

Did I mention that my husband suffers from travel sickness?

Well, fortunately we were soon underway again. And then we stopped again. And then we roared up the rest of the way and practically fell out at the top, a little green but otherwise intact.

Never was I so glad to see a miniature horse.

Like many farmers in the valley, the ones at the Ackerkogelbahn keep a few creatures for the children, who will then persuade their parents to visit again and again. These tiny horses have been here for years, and indeed one of them nearly ate my rucksack on my last visit. I think it was the one pictured below.  Today, a very small boy toddled over to him, watched by his adoring parents. As the child reached out to pat the horse, the horse moved smartly away, leaving the poor infant sprawled in a cowpat. A horse that could do this could certainly maul a favourite walking accessory.

And there were also the ubiquitous Tyrolean Grey cows, including this calf, who was having a drink in the cow trough.

So, I took this as a hint that it was time for me to have some lunch, and to steel myself for the cable car back down to the bus stop. My ankle feels rested, and tomorrow we are hopefully tackling the  Konigsjoch. This is one of those walks that will definitely get my heart rate into the high 150’s, as it is uphill all the blooming way, and some years we end up wading through snow and fording (small) rivers. My husband has assured me that this year it will be different. I await the morrow with a cynically-raised eyebrow.

The weather in Obergurgl this week has been the best that I’ve ever known – sunny, blue skies, little white fluffy clouds, the lot. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it the easiest weather for walking, so we’ve been setting off early and getting home early. And today, we decided to head for the archaeological site of Am Beilstein, about an hour and a half’s walk from the village.

Heading up to Am Beilstein, with the peak of Hangerer in the background. People fitter than me actually run up it!

To start with, we cross the Gurgler Ache, the river for which all the villages around here are named.

We have Obergurgl (of course) but also Hochgurgl and Untergurgl. Never did a river have such an onomatopoeic name.

The rocks on the slope here are full of wary marmots. So wary that they declined to be photographed. Ah well.

The great joy of this walk is that it’s all about water. The streams from the mountains above pour down next to the path like bridal veils, or cascades of ice crystals, or some other simile that I’m too hot to create. I think that there is something about a stream that touches something very deep in us, that makes us feel as if this is a good place to be. So it must have been for our ancestors, because this area has been used by human beings for over ten thousand years.

The water is icy-cold and good to drink, pouring pure from the heart of the mountain.

Hunter-gatherers lived in these hills.  Did they crouch down to bring a cupped palm to their mouths as they looked around for deer or hare? Did their dogs lap in these waters? On this blazing hot day, we were the only people on this trail.

And finally, we got to Am Beilstein itself. The path ends, the hillside falls away, and we can see for miles into the valley below.

In previous years, I’ve been too afraid to go close to the edge, but maybe my vertigo is improving. There is some stonework here from the Twelfth Century, which was used as a pen for sheep or goats, long after the hunter-gatherers had turned into farmers.

The woodwork here is a reconstruction, but the brickwork is from the 12th Century.

So, we sit on a stone and gaze out at the valley, identifying two mountain huts which seem to erupt from the surrounding geology. One is perched like an eagle on a crag, and we look at it longingly. It’s much too hard a climb for us this year – the last five hundred metres is a hard scrabble through boulders. We eat our (slightly stale) cheese sandwiches. And then, as I stand to leave, two roe deer run through the pasture below us. They are the colour of caramel and seem spring-loaded, making elegant sweeping leaps until they disappear behind the rocks and the stunted pine trees. They were here and gone before I could raise the camera, but it’s good to just watch sometimes, to admire the play of muscle and sinew, the dash and bravado of it. For the first time in maybe ten thousand years, these deer can pass humans without fearing for their lives – this whole area is a national park, and it is forbidden to hunt here. However, the inside of any Tyrolean hotel will tell you that things were different very recently. Here is just a selection of the ‘decoration’ in our hotel. Ugh.

Chamois

Roe deer

Badger

Marmot

Ibex

And so we head down, to David’s Hutte, where we manage a cup of tea and a huge shared plate of the local delicacy Kaiserschmarren – a plate of chopped up pancakes with icing sugar and jam. The Hutte dog has found the only piece of shade in the place, and is making the most of it.

And what a wise and gentle dog he seems to be, a distant ancestor of those half-wolves that our hunter-gatherer ancestors first domesticated.

Dear Readers, one of my favourite walks in Obergurgl is along the Gaisberg valley. But to get there, there’s a hard, steep pull up a serpentine service road. The road surface is made of slippery stone-chippings, the sun beats down, and everyone going up in the lift to the hut above has a good view of your (lack of) progress. I have taken to wearing a Fitbit, to log my footsteps. It also records my heart rate.

“What’s your BPM now?” asks my husband, as I suck in some air for the final ascent.

I squint at my Fitbit.

“153”, I say.

“Is that even possible?” he says.

And unless I’ve transmogrified into a hummingbird and not noticed, I doubt that it is. So much for monitoring.

At last we get to the entrance to the valley. I plonk down on a stone, and soon notice that the whole area is full of the blood-red blurs of Six-spot Burnet moths.

They are everywhere here, gathering nectar and bumping into things. As a caterpillar, they would have fed on Birdsfoot Trefoil. These moths are newly emerged, making the most of the short summer season. And less than a quarter of a mile later, there are none at all. Such is the variety of habitats on this walk.

The sheep are finding the heat a bit much. They would be laying in some shade if they could find some, but there isn’t any and this is a risk for humans too – I managed to get a slightly burnt neck yesterday. Here in the Gaisberg, the sheep simply form a ‘sleeping heap’, which seems to work for them.

We stop for sandwiches at a flat rock by the weather. As usual, I am surveying the hillside for marmots, and we soon see one running from rock to rock. Then another appears. This has been a good year for sightings, and I hope a good year for baby marmots.

Spot the Marmot!

As we head towards the glacier, the flora changes too.

Mountain Houseleek (Sempervivum montanum)

The Alps are full of succulents like the Mountain Houseleek, which has the ability to conserve water in this dry environment. But what cheers me most of all is my first sight of these flowers: Snowbells.

Dwarf Snowbells (Soldanella pusilla)

These little flowers are the very first to appear when the snow has melted – you can see them pushing through the ruined, yellowing grass where a snowdrift has lain. In fact, they are said to melt the snow themselves, by fermenting sugars and raising their temperature. They are a member of the Primrose family, and are never found below 2000 metres, so they are true Alpine flowers.

The road home.

We turn to head back to the hotel. A cool wind chills us as we slide down the scree and march down the service road. One day, I know, we will not be able to do this walk. Maybe (hopefully) we’ll be tramping up the hill for years to come, but the day will come when it’s too much. This is not being morbid – it’s just being realistic. Some of our older friends no longer come to this resort because of the altitude and the difficulty of many of the walks. But this year we have managed it, and that is a cause for a modest celebration – a glass of water, and a slightly-squashed cheese roll from our lunchpack. Life seems to be a balancing act between being grateful for what we have, and yet not deluded about what lies ahead.

Alpenrose (Rhododendron ferrugineum)

Dear Readers, there is one plant above all others that tells me that I am back in the Tyrol, and that is the Alpenrose. Some years, it’s already faded. Some years, it hasn’t really come into flower yet. But this year, the hillsides and the forest are full of the cerise flowers.

It is not a rose, as one glance at its flowers will tell you: it’s a Rhododendron. This was a surprise to me, as I always thought of this gaudy family as being something you’d find in Asia. But this is a plant that lives only in the mountainous regions of Europe, and only where there is acid soil. The underside of the leaves has iron-brown spots, which give it its species name. It only grows to a couple of feet high, and can carpet whole areas completely. However, it can’t cope where there is soil disturbance, so doesn’t encroach on to the pasture areas where the other plants thrive.

Although Alpenrose can set seed, and its flowers are loved by bees,  it is especially adapted for the heavy snow conditions which will completely cover the plant in winter: the weight of the snow enables it to root from those branches which are pressed into the soil. It is also a very long-lived plant: one individual in the French Pyrenees has been estimated to be over 300 years old. Not bad for a plant living in such harsh conditions.

Alpenrose is poisonous, but has been used for many years in Alpine traditional medicine as a treatment for rheumatism. And as I huffed and puffed up the mountain trails today, I could well imagine how useful such a medicine might be for those whose whole way of life depended on being able to get up and down the kind of slopes that a Londoner doesn’t encounter. On the other hand, I see many people of advanced years cheerfully eschewing the chairlifts and the bus and walking through the pastures to collect their cows or their shopping, so maybe the message, as in so many things, is ‘use it or lose it’. And aren’t mountain people some of the most long-lived and healthiest in the world? Let’s never underestimate the value of day-to-day activity, of the kind that doesn’t necessarily involve a gym.