A little bit about our ‘Wellness in the Tirol’ hotel – it is lovely. The food is delicious with a beautifully fresh breakfast buffet and 5 course evening meal which starts with a self service salad bar. There is access to unlimited tea which is unusual and rather disappointing for the coffee drinker.
Our room overlooks the lake and we have natural spelt husk pillows – they are taking a bit of getting used to. We are challenging the ‘soothingly firm yet pliable and cuddly’ description.
Lake Achensee caters for walkers, cyclists, rock climbers, and the terminally lazy – you could spend all day sailing the lake on a boat.
This morning we aimed to walk from Pertisau to Achenkirk, via Gaisalm, following hillside paths above the lake. We decided it would be flat and easy, so walking poles were left behind. Experience should have taught us that walking routes can be a mixed bag of terrain, narrow cliff side edges where one slip would have resulted in a long fall and sharp descents over rocks and tree roots – our poles would have been a very useful.
We arrived, relieved and in one piece, at Gaisalm without enough time to make it to Achenkirk. Should we risk the walk back to Pertisau or sit in a deckchair, drink eat strudel and wait for a ferry? The ferry won, but only because we have spent €200 on an Achensee card and need to get value for money from free travel. Nothing to do with quitting while uninjured.
September is season of Almabtried – bringing the cows down from the hills and into barns for the winter. If it is a successful summer and cows and family families have made it through alive and unscathed, the community celebrates by decorating the cows with flowers and bells before driving them through the streets.
There was music and celebrations along the route and at the hotel hosting today’s event, before the very well behaved cows arrived to cheers and fanfares.
The finale came with the cows being serenaded by trumpeters, giving thanks for the summer and warding off evil spirits.
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