54 members of St Leonards Rambling Club flew to Austria for a
seven day walking holiday of a lifetime. They landed in Innsbruck
and were then transported to Mayrhofen which is in the Zillertal
Valley in the Austrian State of Tyrol.
In the Alps, the weather is always unpredictable but during their
stay the sun shone every day with just a light shower on their last
day. The town of Mayrhofen sits at 2300 feet but a couple of the
walks that the group did, started at over 6000 feet and above the
snow line. So although the sun shone they still had to
start off wearing something warm.
Their first outing was a riverside walk from the hotel to the village
of Zell am Ziller.
On arrival at the village, they had lunch then boarded the narrow
gauge railway which took them back home.
For the second day's outing they started at Breitlahner Hutte
[3771ft] and walked to the Gruwandhutte at 4920ft with
spectacular views of the snow covered mountain peaks all
around them.
The third day was the highest starting point of the whole week.
The group took cable cars to Sommerberg at a height of
6300 ft and gradually made their way down to
Hintertux. Once again, the
scenery surrounding them was like scenes from picture books.
On the fourth day they took some time off from walking
and had a day trip to the city of Salzburg, famous
as the birthplace and home of Mozart. The city reminded
them of Edinburgh with its castle towering over
the town. On that day, the temperature reached
33 degrees so they were thankful for the funicular which took
them up to the castle.
Their last walk was, once again reached by a coach journey
on a road, the Schlegeis, with hairpin bends which had only
been opened, after the winter, on that day. The walk followed
the banks of a reservoir where they spent some of their time
avoiding waterfalls caused by the rapidly melting snow on the
mountains.
On returning to East Kilbride, everyone agreed that it had
been an amazing holiday with stunning scenery on all of the
Walks.
Mayrhofen 2014