A valley walk around Mayrhofen

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Will we do a valley walk, a lake visit or cheese dairy visit today? We chose the visit to the cheese making farm down the valley a little and combine it with a walk. It's supposed to be thunderstorms this afternoon so it we probably the better choice.

Around the town and valley is a walking track of about 9km in the forest on one side and along the river on the other. When we arrived at the Dairy it was closed. Sunday of course. We did see the cows indoors and horses though. It seemed such as shame to keep the animals indoors when it's perfectly lovely with plenty of grass outside. Instead, they choose to cut the grass and take it to the animals. It appears that it is haymaking time as famers were either out cutting grass with a small machine or raking and stacking with large hand rakes, ready for baling. There is none of the huge machines that you see in NZ. Also happening along the valley but up in the air were hangliders by the dozen drifting around in the perfect thermals.

It's Sunday so nothing is open apart from the very odd restaurant. We found one at midday outside a church in time for it to start a very loud bonging. The restaurant was a great choice where we could get a cold platter, salad and for me the goulash soup and roll. Yum. It's more of a stew than a soup, but very tasty. Of note too, were the local Austrians wearing their tradional dress. The ladies dresses were very feminine and attractive and some men wore leder hosen.

Sunday used to be a day of rest and here it still seems to be a tradition to keep. As well as the shops being closed many of the buses also don't run so we're a little more confined for the day. Reading, catching up on news, and doing this blog.

In the evening we visited what we would describe as the local pub and sports bar. It was small, very old, pretty basic and had football blaring out. However the beer was fine.

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