Today we decide to do the first Inntravel option of walks
around Kastelruth. It's 17-20km long and will take us five-six hours to
complete, but this is fine as we've been blessed with some lovely weather
again.
We leave the hotel and cross over the main road through
town, then up onto a Tarmac road which has way-marks for route 6. Once out of Kastelruth
we walk over some lovely meadows and have good views of the mountains. The road
we're on is part of a suggested running circuit and ahead of us is a wiry old
man who looks in his seventies. He's in running shorts and whilst he's not
going that fast, both Alistair and I agree we'd like to be that fit when we
reach his age.
We cross over a small road, and pass by an ecological
hotel, then walk to the church of St Valentin. It looks very pretty framed by
the mountains. We then march down a concrete track, through a field with
irrigation jets in full flow. We give them a wide birth and escape a soaking.
We then carry on down the hill until we arrive at Seis. It's a nice enough
place, but it doesn't seem to have the charm of Kastelruth. We stop at a bar
for a drink, before continuing on our way through a residential area and over a
busy road and escaping back into the countryside. We pass a sign for the
Restaurant Pizzeria Salegg, which also promises "discotheque" and
"dancing". We wonder what discos without dancing are like... We climb
up a small slope to reach the lovely old Hotel Salegg and then enter the woods.
It's lovely and cool in here, but not dark & dismal
like the pine forests back home. We think it's because the lives of the people
round here are so interlinked with the forests. They walk in them, pick
mushrooms and berries in them and harvest a few trees to satisfy their building
requirements. Taking down a few trees every year manages the woodland, allowing
light in, so that other plants can grow too. In the UK, pinewoods are usually
just treated as cash crops and, in Scotland especially, whole hills are logged
to leave unsightly gashes across the hillside until the next crop starts to
grow. As we walk we come across three foresters who have just felled four trees
and are clipping them to the back of a small tractor in order to drag them out
of the wood. They have only used a chainsaw to fell the trees, unlike all the
high tech industrial processing machinery we've seen in action in the Highlands
of Scotland.
After a while we reach the Largo dei Fie, a man-made lake
originally dammed in order to breed fish. There are several very chic looking
Italians sun bathing on the lido at the edge of the lake, along with some mad
Germans swimming in the ice-cold water. We take a seat at the little cafe at
the water's edge and I try to eat a giant banana split. To be fair it didn't
look so big in the picture! Alistair has to assist me by eating the final
third.
After our break, we follow the lake round and take a path
down by a field which has excellent views of the mountains. After a while we
see the large village of Vols below us and the castle of Schloss Prosels across
the valley. We carry on into Vols, where school seems to have just finished, as
there are lots of small children wandering about sporting huge backpacks. We
wonder what on earth they need to carry to warrant such huge bags.
The village is pretty, but closed as it's lunchtime.
We've noticed a lot of the villages seem to close between midday and 15:30. We
press on, marvelling at the parking skills of a Porche owner who is only a
cigarette paper's distance from a stone wall!
As we are about to enter another wood, a BMW brushes past
me, then stops about 30 meters in front of me. The driver gets out, as does his
female passenger, they then try to coax a dog out from the back seat. It
doesn't seem that excited by the prospect of its walk, as it still hasn't
emerged by the time we pass by.
Later on we walk past a farm called Grimm with a chained
up guard dog, he gives a few cursory barks, but other than that is fine. The
walking notes suggest a diversion to avoid him, but there's really no need. We
holidayed in the North of Italy once before and every homestead seemed to keep
a large snarling wolf. They were normally clipped to a zip-line affair, so you
thought the dog only had a few meters range, but in fact they often had much
more. Next to those canines, this one is an angel!
There then follows a lot of uphill walking to reach the
church of St Konstantin, it also looks very pretty framed by the mountains. We
are a little dismayed when the path descends very steeply by a stream as we
know this can only mean one thing - a big bit of uphill and yes, it's then
uphill all the way back into Seis.
As the sweat is dripping off us both, all thoughts of
walking on to Kastelruth fade and we call into the local tourist office to buy
tickets for the bus. There is only one other person in front of us, but he asks
about a trip, agrees to purchase a trip, asks more questions about the trip,
pays for the trip, then, when we think he might leave, he asks a few more
questions. When we finally get served, it turns out that the next bus, in 3
minutes, is one where you cannot buy tickets in advance and can only buy them
on the bus! We just make it to the Bushof in time for said bus and are whisked
back to Kastelruth.
On our return, I partake of a milkshake and Alistair of
an ice-cream - I'm not saying we're being treated like regulars in the ice
cream shop, but Alistair gets a "cheerio" as he leaves!
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