Blogs from Sankt Anton am Arlberg, Tyrol, Austria, Europe

Well it's already thursday. The lift we took today only runs Wed. and Thurs. It goes high above the valley below. We took a gondola car for the next 30 minutes and then we followed this narrow rock strewn trail for 1 1/2 hours high above the small villages. At that point we turned back because we would have had to descend a very steep trail down to the villages below. This day the views were all we could have expected. Back to the cable car station and down. Wish you could have been with us. All for now. Lowell... read more

Hello all 70 of you. How do I know that 70 of you can't wait for the next episode? I don't.! ? All I know is it goes out to that many email address's Anyway today was special. Fantastic weather as we took multiple cable cars to some awesome views. One had 3 different cable cars sections that went to the very top. The other was 2 very long chair lifts. One was a 4 seat and the other was a 6 seater. We had them all to ourselves. Always nice to take photos in the open air. BTW the air was wonderful! This evening we walked around the area of the village we are staying in. The roads in the village are like the tentacles of an octopus.? You almost need a gps to find ... read more

As the ski season drew to a close we spotted a great deal at a chalet in St Anton and couldn't resist the lure of Easter at the snow (finally - some good comes out of the credit crunch!!). Our chalet was fabulous, with an indoor swimming pool, jacuzzi and sauna. We had a 5 course dinner cooked every night, and the food was amazing (thanks Craig!!). As if that was not enough, there were champagne and canapés to start ... needed the skiing to work off all that delicious food. The skiing was proper spring skiing, icy in the morning and slushy by 3pm. There had been many, many avalanches around the resort, so much so that the blue run back to the resort was closed. That meant that all skiers from one side of ... read more

First update from the almost 1000 meters of Landeck, in the Tyrolean Alps. A day of rest where, apart from ensuring a minimum of maintenance to Rocinante, I'm in full immersion in the art of eating: breakfast at 10; half a ton of junk-food at lunch-time and now a rich snack of coffee and cake. And it’s only 5pm. Sometimes I suspect I cycle 100 kms per day just to allow myself to consequently freely indulge in food. Food was actually the greatest of my concerns during the first days of this trip. The heat was so torrid to make food conservation almost impossible apart from creating a sort of inappetence, something absolutely unhealthy when you spend most of the day pedalling. Two years ago, crossing the Scandinavian Peninsula, I used to buy all I needed ... read more

Our trip began with a sprint accross western europe to catch the remainder of the ski season in the alps. We had an afternoon crossing from dover to calais and ended up stopping the frist night in a half open campsite near Tournai in Belgium. Grand for one night but wouldn't want to have stayed their any longer. The next day we made it as far as the black forest in Germany after a stop for lunch in Luxembourg. There were quite a few beautiful 'gasthaus' in the black forest but since it was off season they were all closed. We free camped that night at a forest car park at the top of one of the hills and woke up to some beautiful scenery and moved on towards the alps. Shilpa didn't even have ... read more