Wagrain, Austria

Last night we stayed in a ski chalet that we had rented for the night via the fantastic website community airbnb. We never met the host, Rado, but the keys were easy to find, the instructions straight forward, the apartment clean and tidy so with free wifi and laundry facilities thrown in too we rated the experience highly....and he gave us a glowing reference afterwards so we must have been ok too!

Nestled in one of Europe's most popular ski valleys, Wagrain is a town dependant on winter sports. However, unlike some of the other places we passed through it is still very much alive in the summer when the ski lifts transport downhill mountain bikers and the waterparks are open for business.

We thought about going to the waterworld park which was just a stones throw from the apartment but decided to instead to take the Graftenberg gondola up the 1700m to explore the nature and adventure playground.

Looking back (I'm back blipping!) wandering around the lake with the littlest at the top of that mountain was one of the highlights of the trip. I think the craziness of what we were doing hit me there. Here I was high up in the Austrian alps, pushing a three month old baby around in his proper pram (no small easily transportable buggy for him), having just driven to there, via four countries, from Inverurie.

We spent a few hours on top of the mountain, pulling boats back and forward across the lake, learning about mountain bees, playing in the adventure play park and enjoying the incredible scenery. It would have been nice to have spent longer, perhaps wandering higher up on one of the tracks, or down past the bell wearing mountain goats, but we were Slovenia bound, so back down on the gondola we went and back in the car...