Taken for a Run Round Salzburg

Thursday 17 August 2000. After last night, raindrops on noses are not quite one of my favourite things! However I'm prepared to forgive and forget when faced with such a beautiful morning with early morning mist against the mountains and the prospect of a day in Salzburg - the city of The Sound of Music.

We've walked a bit further than usual after breakfast and before the coach leaves and we found the walkers about to board the little train for Zell-am-See.

Coaches are not allowed into Salzburg, except to drop off and pick up at pre-arranged times. John and Keith deliver us into the hands of local guide, Margarethe. After three people though she drops them and asks the drivers, "Please just leave them on the pavement..."

She takes us on a walking tour of the city for almost an hour. She sets off at quite a ridiculously fast pace and soon we are strung out in a long straggly line as we stop to take photos or find it difficult to keep up. Apart from anything else, Salzburg is crowded and we are not sure if the people we are following can see anyone from the coach in front of them or whether we are just wandering aimlessly...

For some reason there were fibreglass cows all over the place, painted in different designs.

Saltzburg has many squares, as we shall see once we get up to the castle! The cathedral stands in a square and a huge stadium had been erected for a concert. There was no way I could take a single photo of it from top to bottom as you couldn't stand far enough back. I took three and have stitched them together.

There are no less than five organs in the cathedral, all of which must be played seperately. The largest, high above the entrance at the back was played only for notable occasions, whilst Mozart himself was not averse to twiddling the ivories of one of the others. He was born in Salzburg and we were to see his birthplace a little later in the tour.

If you watch The Sound of Music You will find a troupe of von Trappers traipsing through this very arch. The only thing we found going through it though was a horse and carriage - but quite splendidly adorned with a miniskirt... In fact there are not many references in Salzburg to The Sound of Music at all. Hollywood has one take on the story. The Austrians perhaps have a different perspective on it.

Hang on a minute, the gang have stopped whilst Margarethe explains something. I couldn't hear her half the time and gave up after a while. Not a von Trapp in sight... Margarethe: please start at the very beginning...

Here's a flight of stairs at the side of a courtyard that may be familiar from the concert sequence in The Sound of Music. It's not in the castle however (which we shall see in the next article).

We come to a large square where a thriving market has been set up. The surrounding palaces are quite something. One of them was Mozart's birthplace.

So a quick look around the market and try to keep Margarethe in sight in the crush of people!

The cheese stall. The market obviously attracts stallholders from all over the place. The young lady was Dutch and in case her cheese wasn't enough, she has a whicker basket full of plain wooden clogs on the ground.

Miss Franny: "Isn't that Christopher Plummer?" Me: "No, it's a fruit and veg stall - they're just ordinary plums..."

Margarethe managed to round us all up and herded us into a very crowded street. "Now ve haf valked you many tvisty turns and you are all lost and disorientated, I leaf you here in zis busy street to find your own vay! Meet back at the bus station vhich you cannot remember and don't be late because der bus can only vait fife minutes! Unt der virst von back ist der sissy!" Disclaimer: she didn't really say that. But, then again, she didn't need to really...

It is a very quaint street with lots of swinging signs outside the shops. We find somewhere for lunch then, successfully fed and watered, we decide to head on up to the castle. Miss Franny stops to admire some plates. Thay are decorated with real gold. I work out the price in UK pounds and push her quickly on...

The Hohensalzburg fortress. It's an impressive chunk of masonry and design, giving an air of both calm beauty and impregnable mass. Should we walk it or take the easy route we wonder? There is a funicular railway that takes you to the lower levels of the castle.

We decide to take the funicular railway up and walk down - we may not be in a rush but we are no fools... This is a funicular railway with a driver's cab! We were at the bottom and were going up. It was crowded and I couldn't see if we had a driver or not.

The car itself was quite steeply racked and had three or four compartments for passengers. At the top of the slope we looked back to watch the cars going up and down for a while. It doesn't look so bad here but I was looking down somewhat - tilt your head to the left a bit!

Ok time to take a few photos and stitch them together to form a panorama. We have arrived at the castle which looms over behind us opposite the view you see here. For those who wish to try their hand at spotting the joins there are four photos...

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At the Grossglockner Glacier

Wednesday 16 August 2000. We have reached the highest point that our coach can get in the High Alpine Pass. It's minus four degrees centigrade, but strangely it doesn't feel all that cold. We went out in T-shirts and were comfortable enough without having to put on the jackets that we carried just in case.

We had hoped to catch a glimpse of edelweiss, but it was too early in the season. Up we climbed, past the final and highest car park and, leaning over the railings, we saw the glacier below us.

There was even a funicular that you could ride to take you down to the glacier surface. We opted to stay up on the road though, we weren't wearing suitable footwear for prancing about on ice.

Glaciers flow like water. Just very, very slowly. And whilst they are doing that, over the years they break off and pick up lots of tiny bits of rock and end up looking more muddy than ice. Just the very top of the glacier was approaching white.

It looked like tunnels had been bored into the side of the glacier so that you could go inside it to get a feel for the chill of the place...

I had brought a telephoto lens for the camera These were the days where I was experimenting with digital which was only in its infancy and today was important enough for me to have my SLR film camera with me. I could see that down in the cracks in the glacier the ice shone with that wonderful turquoise colour.

Having gone down the funicular, people are now climbing up a series of around 30 steps to reach the edge of the glacier. One or two from our party made it down.

We carried on walking up the road until it petered out in a cluster of buildings, bars, shops and restaurants.

We found a souvenir shop! Yodelling teddy bear anyone? Miss Franny? She turns quickly with a guilty look. Have you been sniffing the Schnapps bottles again Miss Franny?

I simply can't make up my mind which of these Tyrolean hats suit me the best... We are 7,500 feet above the level of our home. It is minus four degrees centigrade. We are dressed in T-shirts with bare arms. We buy ice cream...

Outside a helicopter is buzzing to and fro across the mountainside, the crew scanning the larger crevices on the off chance someone might have fallen down one. Actually that would be extremely scary - some of those crevices are very deep! It's time to return to the coach before a crevice comes for me...

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Montmarte

Sunday May 30 1999. Turning left at Sacré-Coeur brings you to Montmarte's Artists' Quarter. The name is derived from "Mons Martyrium" - "Martyrs' Mound". The legend is that in 287 CE the Romans lopped the head off St Denis, the first Bishop of Paris, and two priests on the hill where Sacré-Coeur now stands. St Denis simply picked up his head and walked away.

Place du Tertre is the place to look for the artists. They are the ones whose paintings and sketches are aimed firmly at the tourist rather than the serious collector.

The square used to be the site of the Village Hall. Now two artists to every metre vie with each other to sketch, caricature or cut your silhouette. One such profile cutter followed me for 5 minutes convinced I would give in because I was laughing as I shook my head! The chap, above, was doing blue and white tiles in relief, which were very good.

There was a feverish atmosphere of casual creativity - for it would not do here to be too serious about your art. That was left to the men and women around the corner - standing for the most part with their artists materials under their arms, looking in vain for a corner of a building that had not already been sketched or made famous in a painting before.

It was catching - I would have loved to have got out my sketch pad and tried my hand! In the garrets and lofts, bars and dance halls, Cubism and Impressionism were first thought of and committed to canvas.

Silhouette paper cutter at work! They fold a black card in two before cutting and therefore you get both left and right profiles.

I have never had my profile cut from a piece of paper, but I do have one that was done of my Great Uncle Percy by Lewis W. Leach, (according to the back of the card: The Celebrated Portrait Artist). It is recogniseably my Great Uncle and he paid a princely two shillings and sixpence (half a crown - or as we might say these days: 22.5 pence).

It was time to move on and return to the coach. We bought some postcards and coasters and some other bits and pieces to take home.

Miss Franny bought herself a compact with a nighttime picture of the Eiffel Tower and we bought a set of six drinks coasters with paintings of various points of interest in Paris.

We walked down the path next to the funicular railway. It is seen here, drawn by a cable from the top station.

Back on the Boulevard de Rochechouart we stood on the wide island between the left and right carriageways near to a Metro station and mini dodgem cars. The full size dodgems were probably still circling the Arc de Triomphe... There were quite a few beggers in this area - sitting against the sides of the Metro, displaying the stumps of their amputated limbs, whilst a young black boy was running from one passer-by to another begging for money to ride the dodgem cars.

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Hasting to Hastings

Monday 3 June 2019. We had motored down to Eastbourne on the previous day and booked into a hotel for a few days. Today after the 300 mile drive we were to take it easy and we caught a local bus to Hastings.

Hastings wasn't the bus's final destination so once we recognised Hastings seafront we hopped off the bus and walked the rest of the way to the far end of town. It was glorious weather. In fact we got more suntanned than we had done on the Mediterranean last month!

Above this cliff is William the Conqueror's castle. Below it a large unit boarded up and spoiling the effect of the classical feel to the buildings behind. William of Normandy actually landed a few miles west of here in Pevensey, but the town has come to be synonymous with the famous battle - which also wasn't fought here... A funicular railway affords a less strenuous way up the cliff to the castle, but we left that for another visit.

By the time you reach the eastern side of Hastings you are approaching the old town and the Georgian rows of hotels and guest houses make way to less uniform and somewhat more varied and interesting buildings. Weatherboarding covers many of them and it is here that you will find pubs, restaurants and fish and chip shops with the odd seafood stall thrown in for good measure.

There's a bit of competition amongst the buildings to be the oldest of some type or trade. One is labelled "Britain's Oldest Brewer". This turned out to be more the boast of the brewery supplying the pub than the pub itself. Shepherd Neame Brewery was founded way back in 1698, owns more than 320 pubs and exports beer to more than 35 countries. But here I must point out that I'm not talking about The Dolphin pub pictured here, which is a Free House and just looked nice!

Standing on the shingle beach at the eastern end of Hastings are these fishermens' net drying huts. Tall enough to allow nets to be hung up and dried they can also be used for mending nets.

Not to be outdone by the cliff towards the west, this end of Hastings also has a cliff which has its own East Hill Lift funicular railway. I do love a good funicular. They are rare enough to not have become too familiar and any railway that has "fun" as part of its descriptive name can't be bad!

Talking of railways... Amongst the grounded fishing boats and drying nets on the borderline between beach and concrete we found preparations ongoing to ready the miniature train along a stretch of the seafront. Another steam locomotive was poking its nose out of a nearby shed and a diesel locomotive was partnering this one, which must be a visiting engine as it is not included on the firm's website.

Amongst the net drying sheds are the equipment and vessels, current and past, of Hastings' fishing fleet. Stacks of crab and lobster pots are lined up amidst tangles of old fraying ropes. Boats and shells of boats lie on chocks or leaning on the beach with sun-faded paintwork. Bits of marine engines lie waiting for someone to need a spare part.

Two ladies were sitting, sketching in books. They were together but were sitting so far apart to get different viewpoints that I wasn't sure until I asked. They had driven out for the day from home around 20 miles away. "I hate doing boats..." one confided. I generally feel the same. They are very hard shapes to get right.

We said goodbye to the artists and, with my own sketchbook still tucked under my arm, moved away from the possibilities of the object-rich beach and towards the shop-rich streets of the old town...

Before the advent of national housing regulations, architects and builders, most towns were a delightful hotch-potch of different building design and appearance. You can still see this along older streets, such as the main routes into and out of towns, as building styles change every or every few houses. Now most of us live on estates with just three or four designs to share between the scores or even hundreds of homes.

Ye Olde Pumphouse still has its old pump. It is mounted on the external wall just behind the swinging pub sign. I can think of three reasons why this might be the case: (1) it was thought it would be easier to water the hanging flower baskets; (2) it was sometimes necessary to douse the more drunken customers in order to sober them sufficiently to walk home; or (3) it was originally somewhere much more sensible and was only put up in its lofty position when the landlord woke up to a tap on the door. "Very nice, but can it go over the sink instead?"

This street (George Street) is full of antiques and artisan shops, old timbered pubs and buildings and the odd emporium catering to some dwindling specialist function, trade or habit.

Speaking of which, we followed a sign for cream teas only to find that the small pot of clotted cream that I received with some misgivings, once opened had more empty space than clotted cream... And two tiny individual breakfast jam portions for two whopping big scones? Pah! Head much further west and get a decent cream tea would be my advice.

We spent a bit of time on a bench whilst I do a spot of sketching myself. The little railway runs behind me as I'm doing this. At intervals I jump out of my skin at the horn blast of the diesel loco or cough and choke in the smoke of the steam loco...

Then we re-trace our steps along George Street for a second look and head towards the railway station where we can catch our return bus.

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