Down In Time For Tea And Thunder

Wednesday 16 August 2000. The trip back down the mountain was again one that left some of the passengers unable to look outside at the steep drop!

The water that flows out from under the glacier at first takes on a muddy appearance as it is full of bits of rock and frozen detritus that the glacier has scraped away over the centuries. It collects in a lake which overflows here and which in turn fills a lower lake where the rubbish sinks to the bottom leaving the water to purify a bit.

Here you can see the difference in height between the two bodies of water and the difference in colour of the water.

At the bottom end of this lower lake are two enormous dams, built to withstand ice as well as water. The brighter patch above the lake in the top right corner is a glimpse of white water cascading from the lake at the lower edge of the glacier whilst at the left of the picture large patches of ice can be seen even in August.

The road winds down the pass in a snaking series of hairpin bends. Some people refused to look. Others kept up a less-than-soothing running commentary.

As it happened there was no need to make up horror stories - at one bend we passed a few cars stopped next to a motorbike that had run off the road. The biker looked in a bad way, flat on his back with someone pumping his chest...

We came through a short tunnel and to a patch of snow. Chris stopped the coach and the younger passengers shot out to play for 2 minutes.

12 year old Sarah was most indignant because Chris told her to wipe her pants clean before getting on the coach - she had fallen on her behind!

After our meal at the hotel that night, we set out to walk to Zell for an Austrian beer festival. We got half a mile and the heavens opened. Thunder and lightning flashed around us and we sheltered under the eaves of a small shed between the local and main railway lines.

"It'll slacken off in a minute," said Miss Franny confidently. The storm moved from the mountains to directly overhead. The rain got harder and harder and it went dark.

The shed was no shelter now. We got to the road running alongside the railway and sheltered under the porch of someone's house. They must have heard us talking because the door opened and an elderly couple, after realising we didn't speak German, motioned us to step inside. We were soaked and dripping by now so I declined - we would have wet their carpets and their porch was keeping the worst off us. We thanked them and, bless them, they went back in and then came back with an umbrella for us.

An hour later we were still there. It had now gone fully dark as night approached... The rain was so hard that the train signals shone red beams across the sky.

I took a photo using flash. The flashgun lit the drops of rain up and on the screen of the digital camera we saw just how many drops were in the air in whatever very small fraction of a second the flash fired for (somwhere between 1/200 and 1/1,000th of a second).

This photo became the cause of much hilarity amongst the other passengers for the rest of the holiday! Every time rain splashed the coach windows or we passed a puddle there came cries of "Quick! Are you going to photograph it???"

Eventually we gave up, knocked on the door to give the umbrella back and thank the owners and then we just ran for it back to the hotel. One good thing came out of it though - the lightning hit and stopped the church clock opposite our bedroom window. We had a blissful bell-free morning! Oh... and the beer festival was called off due to the storm.

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A Day in the Mountains

Wednesday 16 August 2000. If you have read the previous article you will know we are on a coach holiday in Austria and that yesterday the coach was struggling to get up hills. Our drivers, John and Keith had stayed up late into the early hours waiting for a DAF mechanic to give the fuel feed lines a once over.

Not only that, but they took it for a long drive up and down hills to make sure it was behaving. So we all got onboard this morning excited to be going high up into the Alps for a look at the Grossglockner glacier.

With many houses in Austria being built of wood or at least framed in wood, there are timber yards galore here. Wood is a big industry.

We started to climb and waved to a group of men cutting the grass on an extremely steep slope. This was being done with scythes, the old way. One or two waved back. A few minutes later the coach started slowing and Keith had to start going down through the gears. It made no difference. The coach was not going to get up some of the steep hills in front of us.

This must have been a nightmare for the drivers but they handled it very well. First a suitable place had to be found to turn the coach around without having to do a 261-point u-turn on a narrow steep road with a long drop to one side! Then we retraced our route back down, waving again to the grass cutters, at least one of whom looked a bit bemused as he waved back. We got to the DAF agent, whose mechanic had seen the coach last night and we would have to wait for a replacement coach.

Keith warned us that the replacement coach would come with its own driver but that he would go with us whilst John waited with our coach, which would be being repaired during the day. The Austrian driver had been dropping the oil on another coach and was worried that he was not in uniform. Once he turned up though, the ladies on the coach started pumping oestrogen all over the place as a tall, blonde muscular young man turned up in shorts...

Fran took her rucksack from the overhead rack, ready to move to the new coach. A bread roll, taken from the breakfast table as per Keith's instructions of last night, bounced down the aisle of the coach to shrieks of laughter from everyone who hadn't heard Keith ask us to bring it. "They've nicked the bread for their dinner!" came a gleeful yell, "are you hungry?!?"

By lunchtime we were on our way again and had reached a town called Heiligenblut. The name of the village means "Holy blood" and it was to here that a phial of blood from Jesus's body on the cross was brought. Gallons of this along with several forests'-worth of splinters from the cross were peddled across the world during the first 1000 years after Christ's crucifixion. In terms of the time lapse between the later findings, it's the same as someone today offering to sell you the real string from Robin Hood's bow (honest Guv...)

We had our lunch in this cafe. Pommes frites - chips or fries depending on which side of the Atlantic you are on! (Oh... and tomato ketchup naturally!) I hadn't a clue how to pronounce this - which was the only thing on the menu I recognised. I said the French "pom freet" upon which a chap eyeing us from the next table suddenly burst out laughing and then choked... "Pommus frittess!" the waitress said sternly. The choking diner looked sheepish and turned back to his own dinner. Whilst we enjoy our dinner, back at the DAF garage John the driver has found himself locked in the garage after the staff went for lunch without telling him...

There was time to look in a couple of shops. I've never been a big beer drinker, but these steins looked very impressive!

Keith explains to the women that no... Chris the Austrian driver can't spend the rest of the week with us...

We leave Heiligenblut and start to climb into the Alps. The road, to say the least, is spectacular! In the lower regions the scenery is full of superb views overlooking villages, chalets and churches.

Chris's coach has a TV screen showing the first satellite navigation system that most of us have ever seen. It's fascinating watching it. the map was stationary and the marker depicting the coach moved up from bottom to the top of the screen. It was uncanny how many times the top of the screen coincided with approaching the top of a steep climb where all that could be seen ahead through the window was sky. Then the top was reached, a further bit of road came into view, and the display reset with the next segment of map and the coach marker at the bottom of the screen!

Once the coach reached the higher ground, hairpin bends and breathtaking drops were the order of the day. We'll have a closer look at those going down. Then eventually the coach turned into a turning and stopped. We have reached the glacier. Well, shall we say that we have reached as far up as the coach can go. Now there is a climb, starting with a hundred or so steps up from the car park! The road is so steep that even walking a little way along from where the coach turned off the road, we are now way above the car park level. Now what did we bring that bread roll for?

Keith at last told us the reason for the bread rolls... Cue for more hilarity in the coach as the other passengers realised we had not snaffled our breakfast rolls to eat in case we got cut off by snow... The Austrian marmot is a great deal bigger than the praire marmots or praire dogs that I had seen before (in zoos - I'm not that well travelled!) They were doing quite nicely out of the crowds at the glacier, obviously having quite a liking for a good "butty" as we would say in the north of England! So much so that there wasn't really much need for me to throw them any more!

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The High Alpine Road to Grossglockner

Wednesday 19 August 2003. We are on a coach, heading for the Grossglockner glacier.

This is the morning coffee stop, already high up in the mountains, but without a great deal of snow...

Mum has recovered from her bit of sunstroke and is carrying a cardigan today, though she says it's too hot to put on.

The view opposite the roadside cafe. Tumbling waterfalls. The locals say all the snow has melted, leaving only the permafrost ice on the high peaks.

Fran and I have been to the glacier before and we are shocked when we see it. It seems a lot smaller than it was in 2000.

Grossglockner peaks at 3,798 metres (12,461 ft) above sea level - this being measured against the level of the Adriatic Sea. It's the highest mountain in Austria and the highest in the Alps east of the Brenner Pass. From it's peak you can see for 140 miles or 150 miles if you count atmospheric refraction. Personally I've made it a habit not to count atmospheric refraction... Anyway it's high up. The views to north, south, east and west reach as far as places I've never heard of in my life... It is the second largest mountain in the Alps (to Mont Blanc) when measured from peak to the foot of the mountain.

So... having come up, we'd better go down again. The covered road on the left of the photo is a protection against avalanches. The meltwater from the glacier is trapped in a dam on the far side of the lake, from where it runs down a gully that remained hidden from the road into the reservoir.

Back down the hairpin bends we go, swaying merrily from side to side, looking at times down long vertical drops!

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