High on the hill was a lonely goatherd

[nineveh_uk]

Back from a delightful holiday in Austria, involving wine, food, the magnificent art and dubious translations* of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the company of the splendid azdak, who bore up nobly under questioning as to when we could next expect her to produce some Wimseyfic. The main event involved a three day point-to-point walk, with luggage transported separately, round the Ötscher, which is a mountain in Lower Austria that as far as I can make out from the guidebooks no-one in the English-speaking world has heard of. I certainly hadn’t. I was happy to be educated, for the walk around, and also over the top, is delightful, involving some impressive canyons, a lot of trees, and (optional) a very big ridge that was brilliant, notwithstanding that in going down rather than up it we technically did it in the wrong direction.



Though some bits did involve going up:



And down was also energetic:



The third day was more generous with the flatter bits:



The weather, having threatened with a dodgy forecast earlier in the week, perked up enormously and was pretty near perfect, being fine and sunny and calm, but not too blisteringly hot (just hot. Return to grey UK skies was an unpleasant surprise) and the torrential rain holding off until we had finished and were having a late lunch in the hotel.

*All reading along in perfect idiomatic art gallery English clearly done by someone who has a very high standard of English, and throwing in words and phrases that make no sense whatsoever, such as “stroy” for “fringe”. I can only assume that they followed the practice antisoppist complains of, paying someone to do a professional translation, and then deciding that they could make bits of it “better”

Comments

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Thank you - it was lovely scenery.