… what happened yesterday. It was rather strange.
Having crashed out really early and woken up to find the radio still playing, I settled back down to sleep and missed all 3 alarms.
07:30 when I awoke and I couldn’t hang about long as breakfast had already started, so I dashed downstairs.
Downstairs, I couldn’t let pass the opportunity to stick my head out of the door to see if there was any snow around. And I wasn’t to be disappointed because up on the top of the mountains, sure enough, there were some traces of the stuff.
Not enough and not low enough down the mountain to be interesting, unfortunately, but snow nevertheless.
While you admire a few more photos of the view from the front door of the hotel, I was sitting down having my breakfast.
And a good breakfast it was too. I had fruit salad and bread – nice German bread – with jam, but I could have had almost anything. And the coffee was really good too.
After breakfast, I went back upstairs. There was plenty of work to do but not as much as I was hoping as there isn’t enough processing power in this laptop to convert my dashcam files to * mp4. That will have to wait a while until I’m home, I reckon.
But with all of the sleep that I had, it’s hardly a surprise that I went off for quite a wander during the night.
We were at a ferry port last night and I was working for a coach company. We were putting passengers on board this ferry and waiting for the next one to come so that we could unload them again. The trips out were really busy and there was a lot of work to be done which meant running around here and there. Coming back, there was hardly anything on the ships coming back. The ships going out were proper cross-channel ferries and the ones coming back were more like lighters with half a dozen cars and a pile of machinery on there. I’d been working for this company for a few years and wasn’t particularly successful – I hadn’t had too many promotions so i was still doing some of the labouring, donkey work about getting these things loaded up while others were doing the more glamorous stuff. When this next ship came in it had about half a dozen cars on it and some heavy machinery. They made a few remarks about the machinery and told me to go down to get it off. I walked down and ended up being stuck in this queue with these people who were climbing off it. To climb off it you had to go down and then up and then there was a gangplank that walked all the way down again. These girls were talking to me about the voyage and asked if I’d sailed on it which of course I hadn’t done but I had to go and supervise the unloading of the machinery
Later on I was with a friend of mine and we were discussing schooldays. I asked him about his A levels and he said that he was expelled from school so he never did them. I asked about where did he do them. Did he go to Dane Bank or somewhere like that. He said no, he just didn’t do them. I thought “how did he get into University?” but he didn’t say too much about that. We were cooking something and it was turning into a bit of a mess. The scene drifted on here and I was with a family, a large family of youngish people really I suppose or at least very active people. We’d been wandering around London or at least what I took to be London south of the city and we ended up in a pub. We were chatting away there about all kinds of different things and the scene suddenly changed to the Shropshire moors round by Prees Heath aerodrome was. We were having to clamber our way through this series of walks and wondering how they were getting the cars onto these car parks because it seemed to be like all rows of steps and you had to drive down these rows of steps that didn’t seem right to me. In the air at one point were some helicopters and some balloons. I mentioned the word “balloonatics”. We were talking about breaking wind. I said that if anyone cornered the market my brother would have done that a long time ago because of the amount he produces. Someone else said “oh yes I can get a big cardboard box and can fill it quite easily”
Later on in the morning after I’d finished my work I went for a nice long walk.
The street where the hotel is situated is a dead end – I’ve driven down it a few times looking for hotels. That’s not my hotel but another one. What’s interesting me is the cable car wires in the background.
The valley here is quite steep at the sides and to walk up to the top is something not for the average hiker. And of course, we have all of the winter sports. This area is not one of the more famous ski areas but it is nevertheless very well-regarded and counts the Dutch Royal Family among its more famous visitors.
Down into town I walked, to see what has been going on here.
There are plenty of artefacts to remind us of the area’s glorious past, such as this one here. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve been to see a great number of covered bridges in the past, mainly in Eastern North America, but very occasionally in Europe too.
Lech has its own covered bridge just here. There’s the new modern bridge beside it but the covered bridge is still in fairly good condition and we can walk through it. According to the plaque, if I’ve read it correctly, it was built in 1665 and taken out of use in 1976
Here’s another artefact, one that I don’t remember seeing before.
Just like every other country in Europe there was a thriving postal network in the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the 19th Century and of course the nature of the terrain rendered railway traffic rather difficult, if not impossible, in many places.
Until the arrival of the internal combustion engine in sufficient numbers, the postal horse-carriage was really the only way for people and mail to move around
This one has the dates 1900-1925 written on it, suggesting that it was one of the final ones to be issued before the motor vehicle took over.
While I was out on my travels, I came across this impressive machine.
This is not unfortunately one of the fastest lorries in the world as described, with some derision, by no less a person than Ettore Bugatti. This is something much more exciting than that.
Bentley’s “fastest lorry in the world”, the Bentley 3-litre, was replaced by a 4.5 litre version in 1927. Walter Bentley was a great believer in increasing engine capacity to increase power.
His opinion wasn’t shared by everyone. Certain people such as Tim Birkin believed that a lighter vehicle fitted with a supercharger would be much more successful. There had been experiments with a supercharged 3 litre engine but Birkin carried out developments with fitting a Roots Supercharger to the 4.5 litre engine.
Only 55 were built because, while they were fast, they weren’t reliable enough to finish races such as the Le Mans 24-hour race, in which the normally-aspirated engines were more successful. Nevertheless they are of tremendous interest and value and Birkin’s car was sold at auction in June 2012 for over £5,000,000.
Finding a Blower Bentley here in Austria is quite astonishing.
The church is the Church of St Nikolaus and dates from round about the end of the 13th and beginning of the 14th Century – a date of about 1380 has been mentioned.
It’s quite a beautiful building that I have admired on many occasions, but each time that I’ve been here in the past, THE CHURCH WAS SWATHED IN SCAFFOLDING – even when Nerina and I came here in 1988.
Today though, I was in luck. All of the scaffolding has gone. But unfortunately, I’m still not able to go for a look around inside. However I was told that the interior dates from the 1790s but if I were to look carefully, I’d find some frescoes even older than that.
Despite being a rather touristy old-world town, it’s the kind of place where there is always redevelopment taking place.
When I WAS HERE LAST, IN 2018 I have a vague recollection of some building work going on in the town centre but I didn’t pay too much attention to it at the time. This time though, I went to make further enquiries and there was a handy chink on the fencing for me to post the lens of my camera.
We have a nice big hole in the ground that looks as if it might become a subterranean car park and also a cement silo at the side. It’ll be interesting to come past here next time and see what’s grown up on the spot.
Seeing as it was almost lunchtime I went to the local supermarket and picked up slice of melon and went for a walk at the side of the river
The effect of the altitude and the effects of the heat were telling on me, that’s for sure, because I was struggling for breath. I couldn’t get far out of the town along the river before I had to sit down for a rest. This seemed like a pretty good place to have my lunch.
It was a good job that I’d bought a can of energy drink too while I was in the shop because that went down a treat too. I needed that right now.
The river that runs through the town is called, unsuprisingly, the River Lech.
And it’s quite true to say that the town is named after the river because in the historical past it was known as Tannberg. Its name evolved into Tannberg am Lech, then into Lech and today the town is officially known as Lech am Arlberg.
There’s no record of any habitation here prior to the 14th Century although, on looking around, I could easily imagine that Transhumance practices would have taken place here.
Transhumance is the name of a farming activity that was, and still is in certain circumstances and locations, practised in these areas.
In the winter, all of the animals would be taken down to the lowest valleys and in the worst weather, housed indoors. As the Spring advanced and the snows melted higher up the mountains the animals would be taken up to the fresh grass and would basically follow the snow line. A herdsman would live with the animals in the mountains, bringing them back down as the weather closed in later in the year.
A similiar practice is undertaken in fishing communities like Coastal Labrador where families would follow the spawning salmon to the sea and then stay on the coast for the season to harvest the cod.
But returning to Lech, its modern importance is due to the Winter Sports activities that take place here. Several World Cup skiing events have taken place here.
Combined with the neighbouring villages of Zurs, St Christoph; St Anton and several others, it has one of the largest interconnected ski areas in Europe, all accessible by ski lift and ski drag, one of which we can see in the background.
In the summer, it’s host to the hordes of tourists, Yours Truly included, who come here to take the mountain air and to relax. I first came here in 1988 with Nerina and I’ve been back ON SEVERAL SUBSEQUENT OCCASIONS.
In the end, the fatigue got the better of me and I came back to the hotel and sat in the sun with the rest of my melon and a good book to enjoy the atmosphere. However it wasn’t long before I became overwhelmed with sleep so I went to my room to sit down for a while.
Next thing that I knew, it was 17:00 and the afternoon had gone just like that. I did some more work, seeing as it was rather too mate to go for a walk in the hills as I had intended.
For tea it was another session with the slow cooker. Pasta, veg and chick peas, followed by soya dessert.
But having crashed out so decisively earlier, now I can’t sleep again. It’s going to be another long night for me.
