Over - or through - the mountains

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The weather this morning has turned atrocious so no mountain rides today. Em was NOT happy. Anyway, we set off to find our farmstay near Lienz which is on the other side of the Alps. The SatNav took us off the motorway around one of the major mountain tunnels (as there is an additional toll on top of the vignette we already bought) and up the mountain pass. It got colder and colder, closer and closer to the snow line until it began to snow. The weather was getting even worse so we stopped at the mandatory snow chain installation area for a quick play in the new snow for Em. Then we had to turn around as we are not prepared for driving in those conditions. Back to motorway to pay the toll and through the long tunnel in pouring rain and sleet at about 1 degree outside temperature. When we came out the other side, we found lovely sunshine and an increasingly warm day at about 15 degrees. Quite a difference! We made our way to Lienz and had a quick stop at Maccas for afternoon tea and to pick up some shopping at the store next door before winding our way up the side of another mountain to our farm for the next 3 nights. Crazy single land roads with blind corners are the norm around here but we managed to get to the house. I don’t know what we were meant to do if someone was coming the other way, let alone I it was a tractor as they also frequent these roads!



The farm is an absolutely lovely place, about 500 years old with a huge barn beside it. They keep cows and chickens so Em was thrilled to get to feed them. Shovelling the hay down from the loft and giving it to the cows was great but the slide down the huge haystack certainly made Myriam (one of our hosts) her new best friend!

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