One of my targets for this trip to Borovets was to climb Mount Musala, the highest peak in the country. I did as much research as I could from the UK over the internet, and it seemed achievable even for an amateur like myself. I’ve been on trips in winter before so I am not completely unskilled, I just don’t get to use those skills often enough. The forecast for the week was better early, so I headed out on Tuesday, which proved to be the best day of the week, windy but bright and with high broken cloud. In the end, it proved a challenge but with a bit of perseverance I made it to the top. I got the Gondola to the Yastrebets station and walked from there, a round trip of 6 hours, the return slower by the heat causing the snow to become soft and making the going slow as I sank deeply every few steps. All worth it in the end, with the experience and the pictures being for me great things.
Across the valley.Leaving the ski area and heading for the mountain.A view of the Musala Hut, at the head of the valley.A warm-up slope, Musala Summit in the background.Looking back down the valley.At the foot of the final ridge next to the Chalet Ledenoto Ezero. You can see the marker posts showing the way, very useful.Chalet Ledenoto EzeroOn the way up. A View.First sight of the Rila Mountain range South of Musala.On the Summit, 2925m.Summit Met Station.Looking back to the summit.
Hard work but well worth the trip. I’d like to go back in summer and do a longer trek through and around the Rila range. A friendly place, with fantastic views.
I’ll apologise now for the number of images here, all I can say is this place was a big highlight of our trip to Miami last year. It was our 20th wedding anniversary and we spent a week in Florida, based at South Beach in the Art Dec District then used the open top buses to get around.
Street Art is everywhere.Wall ArtGreat StuffDetailIn the courtyard.Big Scale.Cool Ideas.Views Everywhere.Beautiful place to stroll around.Garage Art.Amazing Ideas.Just the whole building. She was suspicious.Detail.All over the place.Grey scale.Inside the gallery.
One final image, before you all die of picture overload. A view over the beach from our hotel, amazing skies as the clouds come and go. I’ll follow-up with a walk around Miami in another post.
Views from where we were.
This was just one stop on the week, so many memories of the place. So there is more to follow. We did keep in with out tradition of trying to find the unusual and different places to go, so I have lots of pictures from the trip. Choosing the ones to go in a book is proving harder than usual. For now, I hope you enjoyed the artwork, and that you get out and find some local to you. There is art everywhere you look, get out and find it.
Before we left for Austria, I was online with one of my favourite stores, Stanfords. The home of maps, for anywhere. So I was able to procure a set of maps for the area around Schladming, I was also able to enjoy evenings with maps spread out across the table, looking at routes, ridges and mountains. Finger tracing footpaths and tracks with strange German names and descriptions. I picture in my mind the places I want to visit, wondering how close to reality the walks I do will be. This holiday was not a disappointment, the whole area was a feast, for the eyes and for the walking. After we arrived, regrouped, and let Mondays rain wash away the blues, on Tuesday I headed for the Guttenberg Haus. To follow a route climbing up a steep valley at the Eastern end of the Dachstein group, even from the car park the views were good back across to the other side of the valley.
Car park with a view.The view from down here.A woodland wandering start.
I started out alone on the path, which rambles through a small hamlet/farm, before leading into the woods and to the first hut of the day, a restaurant for the less serious climber. I hope the pregnant woman and old man who passed me were heading there, I didn’t see them the rest of the day and I was taking my time and setting a nice slow stroll of a pace as well as plenty of stops for pictures and gazing around.
Nothing to see here, move along.The restaurant hut entrance.
The restaurant (I wish I knew its name) provided this bench, to try to trap unwary walkers. It would be too easy to sit and relax, to enjoy a glass of the cold mountain beer and sit on the terrace to enjoy the view. So I didn’t stop, I strolled coolly past and carried on out of the trees into the pit of the valley. Following the great gouge left by the snow melt.
You can see the grey scar descending through the green.
The path climbs and zigzags to the left of this massive gully all the way to a glacial moraine. Views keep expanding, the air clears as the cloud lifts, and the true size of these hills becomes apparent. South the Alps stretch away further into Austria, well worth the effort of climbing up here. Despite the popularity of the area there seems to be space for everyone, and it wasn’t till higher up that I passed a group of school children heading for the hut for lunch. They cheated and had their bags taken up on the small cable-box(? See the picture) used for ferrying supplies.
Cable-Box. Or the easy way to the top.Children watching their bags leave.Views expanding.Leading me on.Cloud lifting from the peaks.
As you climb the nature of the land changes, everything starts to hunker down in the shadows of the mountains. Things cling to small spaces to grow. You can see the way winter attacks the land, and then when the spring thaw arrives only the hardiest can regroup and spread into the spaces. The quiet of the track, broken by the children climbing up now from below me, glimpses of the track ahead make the world suddenly jump in to a new perspective, distances get distorted here.
Enough blue for a sailors trousers.There are people on the path ahead.More views.
Below me on the valley bottom I can just make out the hotel, the haze is lending everything down there a dreamy feel, colours are dissipated and the white of clouds and mountain tops mingles, I could sit an hour and watch the shades of the view change. Up ahead is the first glimpse of the hut, deceptively close, still a way to go. The edge of the moraine is above and still to be crossed.
First sighting of the hut.A bit of a pause to admire the flatness.I know, more mountains, and the moraine. Left over from an old glacier.Getting into the nub of it now.What can I say, I like the view.A change of perspective.And again.
There are some big lumps of rock up here, a palette of grey, green and white, spread in front of the blue sky that drifts with clouds. The odd gust of wind to make sure you are safe, all the while the metres click away behind, this was exactly what I wanted when I was looking a the maps those months ago. Slow time climbs with lots to see, shady woods and nosy rivers below, steep edges and open places above.
Rock.Lead on.Guttenberg Haus.The view from the hut.
It’s a good place to stop for coffee, to regroup and get some information about conditions further up the track, and to simply enjoy the feeling of being here. The children arrived as I was drinking my coffee, but were shepherded into another room for their lunch, but they weren’t being noisy or troublesome, just happy to have made it. You can sleep here, and the hut forms part of a long distance trail through the area. And the hut also celebrates its One Hundredth Year this year (2014). The terrace is the only place to be on a day like today and to drown in the spectacle of peaks all around, near and far.
Waiting for coffee.Choices.Perspective.
I left the hut to go on a bit further, clambering under a large lump of rock, along a track that wasn’t sure about itself, sometimes a royal road, other times barely a goat track, boulders and gulleys adding to the interest. Now though I had the world to myself, to look out and down on everything I had left that morning. Jane was down there somewhere, reading or strolling in town, probably casting the odd glance my way too.
Curious.Mittelspitz.Looking down.A royal road ahead.Looking down again.Looking up.I’m heading for the notch and some lunch.The path behind me.This looks like a good spot for a picnic.Nice spot for tea with a view.
I sat with my lunch for about thirty minutes, silent and happy, enjoying the moment. Nobody passed me, I had the path and the pass to myself, snow and mountains all around, a stiff breeze and a bright sun hardly hindered by the clouds lingering at this height. Time to head back, and see what it was like in reverse.
Just something to remember.Mountains.Something to take home with me.The places I have been.Where do we go from here.
When I got back to the hut, I once again sat for a while on the deck, looking out over the valley, drank some cold Apfelsaft, and contemplated nothing except what was in front of me. Soon I’d be back down with the life of the town, better for having made the trip.
Guttenberg-Haus.They keep it tied down, to stop it being stolen.Wildlife.I came up that!Flowers.A look back.Nearly got a picture of a bird.
So I returned, feeling good about life, having climbed again in the Alps, not Mont Blanc but a brilliant walk, and so many amazing sights. The hut was warm and welcoming, good coffee and apple juice. A worthy marker for the trip. I was able to take lots of pictures (sorry) and take all the time I wanted to enjoy the whole experience. I will come this way again. Perhaps to stay overnight and walk on further, make a couple of days of mountain life, to just relax and enjoy the time spent looking and walking. Hope summer is good for everyone, take some time to sit and do nothing, it’s good for your soul.
Where to next, for me the fun part because we are heading to the mountains. To Austria, an Alpine town called Schladming, at the foot of the Hoher Dachstein mountains. The trip across Germany turned into a bit of a disaster with a three-hour traffic jam outside Munich, planned road works apparently, pity they didn’t plan what to do with all the traffic. We still arrived in good time though, to see the sun go down over the mountain and get a cold beer before bed.
Once we were back on track, we stopped for a coffee and a driver swap, Jane took over as we headed for the hills, it’s safer that way, I can’t stop looking around at everything.
Motorway views.Castles flashing by.
The road weaves through tunnels and passes, below castles and through wooded hills striped by waterfalls, all while we get closer to the hotel we shall be staying in for the week. We left the main roads to follow the river Enns to Schladming where it joins the Talbach. Hills rising on both sides of the valley, snow hanging in the high clefts, cloud rolling across the tops, I had the chance to take a couple of pictures before the light was lost.
Blue sky of a different sort.Night.
Morning, and a first day without a drive ahead of us, time for a look around, to see where we have landed. A day to explore, to see the town and get our bearings. A day made for planning, for checking the weather for the week ahead and to see if we could find some way of watching Wimbledon. The town was quiet, normal I suppose for a Sunday in the early summer of a ski town. The cloud was low and rain forecast for the day. But standing again on the balcony, the panorama spread out around us made it all OK.
Looking out over Schladming and the Hoher Dachstein mountains.Schladming detail.Doorhandle.RC Church. Town centre.Rooftop views.Coffee stop views.Looking towards our hotel from the church.
It’s always fascinating, to walk in a completely new place. Where even the language is something to be discovered. I had visited Germany when I was in my early teens, but very little of the language has stayed with me. We tried our best and the locals were friendly and not at all put out by our ignorance, we could at least say please and thank you.
Rushing water.More water rushing.
As is normal, towns in the area are all constrained by the mountains around them and the rivers cutting through them. The two photos are of the Talbach, falling from its high mountain start. Unfortunately rain came, and we scuttled away to look about in the car, and finding some trails local to the hotel to see what could be done.
Waypost in the rain, the loneliest post.Drifting on a Sunday afternoon.Looking down the valley.Private something??
The next few posts will be about the walking around Schladming, sad to say, we didn’t visit the town much. The call of hills and lazy evenings in a comfortable room won out. We went in for food, for shopping and for information, all of which was provided admirably. The hotel was great, nice big room, and everything we needed to be relaxed, and friendly staff always willing to help and answer questions. I think we shall be going back, it was too good to do in one go, you need to visit a place twice I think to get the best from it. Lots of pictures in this post, hope they do the place justice with my random eye.
Happy trails everyone, enjoy every journey, even the unexpected diversions. It was interesting when stuck in a German traffic jam to see everyone having picnics, walking the dogs and children or strolling ahead to the services for refreshments. A good way to use the time, stretch your legs and get some fresh air, it’s about how you use your time isn’t it.
Holiday life, fascinating to watch, great fun to be in. Sometimes though it’s nice to be able to drive away from the frenetic side of it. We visited Calella near Barcelona in 2012 on a trip down the coast and I was struck by the complete difference between the morning easy way of life, relaxed and quiet, with the afternoon attack by multiple tourists looking for noise, food and something to drink. All the while seeing who is about, watching, wanting something to happen. An interesting interlude and good to dip in and out of but not a way for me to live a life.
Calella.
Beer bars and TV’s and do you want chips with that,
all set against deep Mediterranean sea and sand.
Flip-flops and high heels short skirts and night life
all day and all night, walking to be seen. Sitting to watch.
the pickers and choosers and the wanting or needing
all waiting for the right one to happen along.
The hotel is cheap and the sleep is noisy and we leave
in the morning driving into Spain, away from the people
all living for a two-week dream in the sun on the beach.
We leave the silent morning streets to the Spaniards
with coffee in the shade of the tree-lined streets,
leave them in peace to wait for the start of another day.
A walk through the world between places 