Holidays...

As I mentioned last week, we booked a hol in Austria for the first week of term, which was the first week of September. We had a brilliant time and the weather was beautiful (whilst it was flooding again at home). Not our usual sort of thing 'cos it was a package booked with Crystal Lakes and Mountains just 9 days before departure and it was half-board - it was stunningly good value (i.e. cheap!).
But we loved it - being picked up from the airport and returned there at the end of the hol was a real luxury! We didn't have to work out bus/train timetables or worry about missing the 'plane. The food was very good in the hotel so we didn't eat anywhere else, although we had intended to eat a couple of meals out.

Mayrhofen was lovely, it's in the Ziller Valley in the Austria Tyrol and surrounded by the Alps. There were lots of waymarked walking routes and we found ourselves walking most days - our longest was an 8 miler into the next valley to visit the Stillupp Lake. On the way we stopped at a gasthof owned by someone who did falconry displays every afternoon and we just caught the end of one on our way back.

A couple of times a day the local transport company runs a steam train on the proper line between Mayrhofen and Jenbach so we took a trip on the normal train out to Jenbach and caught the steam train back. I think they also do steam train driving courses on a Friday! The paths were so well marked that many people just caught a train or bus to a local village and walked back - we did the reverse one day and walked as far as we could before catching the train back. We also took a few pictures of the 'hobby train', a smaller steam train that ran on an auxiliary line.

We went up the two cable cars that ran from the centre of Mayrhofen, the Penkenbahn and the Ahornbahn and did some walks at the top of those mountains - you could catch the cable car up and then walk down in about 2 hours, but we didn't try that. The weather was so hot on some days that up in the mountains was the coolest place to be. We did catch the bus to the Hintertux Glacier, where people were skiing and snowboarding in the middle of summer! We didn't take the cable car quite that high because it was very cloudy that day but our views of the glacier were still pretty stunning..

We've got lots of photos of our holiday over on our 'web album' on the right of the screen. Mayrhofen and the Austrian Alps have been added to our ever growing list of places to go back to, and are wondering if we could get there by bike...

Free at last...

Well, it's been 3 months since I left the college and I've got to say, it was the best decision I've ever made. The first couple of weeks were a bit traumatic, I hadn't realised how such a big change would affect me - foolishly I thought I'd walk out of my old job and feel wonderful straight away, and was then disappointed when I didn't! But I'm feeling great now and managing very well on the reduced budget. I love not being a manager, not having to make decisions, not having to enforce decisions made by others that I didn't agree with, not having to manage and timetable staff, not having to work evenings, not having to play politics and I've not missed libraries or education one bit.

I'm enjoying my new job. I'm not responsible for anything and it's great! Being paid to watch the Olympics was fun but I've not managed to get my hands on the silver 'we' won yet - I did get two mugs brought back for me from Bejing though!

I've especially enjoyed booking a holiday to Austria for the first week of what would have been the start of term, as well as booking a fortnight in Egypt for the middle of next January (2 weeks for what it would have cost us to go for 1 week during college holidays).

This blog is interspersed with just a few photos of very well-named vehicles we've noticed on our travels. The car is in the Haynes Motor Museum in Sparkford and the scooter was spotted in Spain a couple of years ago. Obviously motor companies know class when they see it...