Fri 14 September - Sporthotel Floralpina, Seiseralm

Today is our last day of walking, tomorrow we will travel back down to Venice and on Monday we will fly back to Edinburgh airport. We cannot believe how quickly the fortnight has passed.

When we awake it is still cold and there is still snow on the mountains. There has been a hard frost last night. The weather forecast though says its going to be scorching later in the day. Alistair wants to climb to the top of Plattkofel, but I am not feeling that great and so we decide to do the medium level option walk to the Langkofelhutte instead.

We take a few hundred meters off our journey by taking the cable car up to the Williams Hutte. The bus has just come in from Kastelruth and there are around fifty people ahead of us in the queue for the cable car. The queue moves quickly though and we are soon on our way. We've taken our rucksacks off prior to getting on the cable car and so there are no pathetic moans from Alistair about not being able to breathe!

At Williams Hutte there are fantastic panoramic views of all the mountains, still dusted in snow. After looking around we set off for the Murmetier Hutte at 2132 meters above sea level. It seems like most people are going up to Plattkofel and so it's quite peaceful here. We hear a few marmots squeaking, but other that that it's very quiet.

Path 527 is a really beautiful route, it passes under the peaks and rock walls of Plattkofel, then crosses a hanging valley. The walking notes say this is a good place for a picnic, but today it is frosty, shaded and mysterious. We then start along a narrow path alongside the mountain, hemmed in by solid rock walls. There are a couple of recent landslides here and we pick our way over the rubble. We then turn a corner and see Langkofelhutte framed up between the mountains and the blue sky. As we turn onto the wide steep path zigzagging up to the Hutte I don't know whether to laugh or cry as everything is so beautiful. We slog ever upwards to the Hutte, where we partake of some much needed refreshments.

The food at Langkofelhutte is lovely, the staff are very polite (and the Italian climber who serves us quite nice eyecandy)! The building itself is picturesque. If Carlsberg did mountain huttes this would be the blue print. There is still quite a bit of snow here, which seems incongruous given the blue sky. From outside the Hutte we can see all the hills we have climbed during the last week. It really is a splendid finale to our fortnight's walking holiday in the Dolomites.

We take our time coming down from the mountain, we are in no rush to leave this all behind. We join the Santner Weg and follow it downhill. We sit for a while in a big clearing, where all we can here is the chirping of birds and the occasional rock falling. We start walking again, leaving the main trail to walk across a meadow, then join the main route again to walk down into Saltria. It has been a lovely walk and a fitting goodbye to the Dolomites.