Walk near St Christof 4 8 08

Today Helen was off so she had suggested walking to a mountain hut near to st Christof, it’s not a long walk but very steep uphill then down hill.

We’d arranged to collect them at 10 so we were up and had breakfast, I went to the spar shop to get some fruit then we set off. We drove to St Christof and parked the car, the weather was not looking good and cloud was blowing up the valley.

We set off up the steep hill, it was a bit of a scramble at times.

The cloud as weird, it just blew up the valley like it was from a machine.

We stopped for a rest at a bench with a nice view, well it should have been a nice view if we could have seen something.

We got to the first plateau after about an hour climbing, there was a lake for the dogs to swim in which they loved. Pity the pylons spoil the view.

We carried on up the next uphill section, the path was getting looser. At the tp we stopped by another lake and let the dogs swim. We noticed ben had a big red graze / rash on his nose, he didn’t have it this morning when we left so he must have banged into a rock in all the excitement, we need to stick some tea tree oil on it later. e carry on again up the hill.

We stopped at the next flat bit for a bit of chocolate and a drink. Anne took this picture of us, Helen had been having a pee behind a bush and ran to get in the shot, you can just see her in the bottom left.

We debated the logic in going on, the mist was closing in and where we were going looked very dark and wet. We were more than half way there but none of us wanted to get soaked. Eventually we decided to turn back, it was a difficult decision but we met someone on the path who was coming back, they had said that there was no view as the mist had rolled in, the view was what we wanted so we turned back. It transpired to be the right decision as on the way down the rain rolled in and we would have been soaked.

A couple of mountain flowers for you, the bottom one is Alpine Rose, not sure about the top one.

This stuff is like cotton wool on the hillside.

We drove on to Lech, a really exclusive Ski Resort where Lady Di was a frequent visitor. It is a lovely little town but by now it was crashing down.

I thought this carving looked a little bit dodgy!

These looked better

We found a really nice baker with a little coffee shop round the back. Helen asked if we could take the dogs in, this is allowed in Austria, dogs are welcome everywhere, even restaurants. We had a really nice snack lunch then went for a wander round.

Lech main street

We drove back to St Anton, we had to wait at the tunnel as they are doing some work on it, making it wider, this will take 10 years to do which is strange as when it was built in the 1940’s it only took 5 years to build and they didnt have the machinery they do now.

We’re a little concerned about the car, the wheels get very hot and we can hear this wsh, wsh, whs, whs, whs noise all the time so when we got back I took the wheels off to check the brake pads, they seem ok. The man that owns the apartment came by and asked if there was a problem. I told him what the noise was and he seemed to know exactly what it was. Apparently the pistons that drive the brake pads are jammed with bake dust and wont be releasing properly making the noise as the brakes are now jammed on very slightly. This makes sense as  the car struggled to get up the hill – I thought it was ‘cos we had Helen in the back!!

He’s suggested a local garage so we’ll head there tomorrow and get it dealt with.

We watched an episode of 24 then I went to the Swimming pool, it is a lovely pool, very modern and not very busy. Helen and Anne came for dinner bringing Chicken and Cous Cous with them. I set up Helens new tom tom for her.