We fly to Vienna together for 3 and a half weeks. Volker and Anke and Mitja from Berlin fly down for a quick visit.
Steep walk down the hill in the rain to the tram stop.
We manage dinner with most of the neighbours and a bit of swimming at the local when it was hot.
We catch the train to Salzburg for 3 nights, the first of which is spent at Willie's hut on Werfengweng. We walk up the Kagual mountain after a very early start for some spectacular views from the top by mid morning.
We also saw Gemois (goat antelope) through the binoculars, so no photo.
At our highest point, views to the west, above, and even higher peaks to the north, below;
The view from Willie's hut, we climbed to the peak on the left of the valley at the top.
It is fantastic weather but I am so exhausted that I fall asleep as soon as we get back to the hut. I think the climb was over 1000m . . . Late afternoon sees us walking back down the mountain to the Werfengweng train station and back to Salzburg. The next morning we pick up Peter Auer from the Salzburg train station with a Brompton folding bike. We ride to the bio pool at Bachtesgaten - the fourth time we have been there, and the weather is again, glorious.
I spent four days in the UK, taking my sister and her kids and dad who happened to be there at the time on the Yellow Duck tour of London.
The Yellow Duck is a 1940's amphibious craft which actually saw action in Dunkirk. Quite a number of surviving examples see service as tour vehicles in the major capitals around the world.
Dad and I roll up the next morning to watch the Market Harborough Park Run in which Paul and Bec are participating.
Lunch is at Foxton Locks as the beautiful weather holds.
The new house Bec and her family now live in, is big and has nice views of the meadows outside Market Harborough . I fly back on the Sunday.
We also visit Peter Auer at his mum's and also have lunch at a friend of his, whose house Peter had built in various stages over the years.
On the last Friday, we visited Suz's brother, we took a cross country route on a logging road along the ridge of hills surrounding Vienna . . .
. . . spending a few quite minutes at the grave of Suz's parents beforehand.
The last Sunday was hot and we had caught a train an hour out of Vienna to Hollabrunn to ride to Ernst Brunn Wolf Park. Mostly off road, which at one spot became just a field of grass 50cm high, surrounded by oak forest.
The track starts to get worse . . .
It was a long day, 30+ degrees and over 30km to get to Ernst Brunn where we had lunch and talked ourselves out of going to the Wildlife Park because of the impressive uphill involved. We had already been on that hill . . . we rode all the way back home, which was flat if not downhill, all up about 80km and over 1100 vertical metres.
Flatter, smoother on the way back home.
On our last day, gorgeous weather yet again, we manage another ride to Coblenz in the hills behind Suz's parents' place before we pack up and fly home.