The Gasthof Seeblick, where we stayed last night in Nassereith, is a large and solid establishment. This applies not only to the building, but also to the Schaber family that owns and runs it. Herbert Schaber is large and rosy cheeked, the image of a prosperous businessman, while Gabi is trim and blond, probably the brains of the operation. It was pleasing to also see their grown son Lukas working the restaurant and the front desk, clearly the one who will inherit the empire.
When I say the building is large and solid, I also include the lovely exterior decoration, the immaculate cleanliness, and one of my trigger items - the marble steps. So many of the guest houses have super solid, super clean, marble stairs up to their many upper floors. I love these.
At breakfast, I dropped a fork while standing at the buffet. I picked it up, and placed it on a side desk, not part of the food display, because of course it could not return to service without being washed. What impressed me was the speed with which Gabi appeared out of the woodwork, with a replacement fork, while spiriting away the offending utensil.
The breakfast was pretty good, and did have some soft Camembert type cheeses. I greedily took a rather large wedge of this. Back at our table, I used a clean knife to cut a slice, and this I tasted. Yeeech! Goat. Everybody seems to love goat cheese, but not me. We have raised goats. Almost all goat cheese tastes to me like a billy goat smells!
I felt guilty about the large wedge of cheese, goat or not, so I carried the plate back to the buffet and carefully replaced it. Like lightening, Herbert materialized out of the woodwork. "No, no", he scolded, confiscated the offending cheese and consigned it to the garbage. Ah, isn't that Germanic culture great? When I got back to our table, Dodie, 1/2 German herself, double scolded me too!
Gabi, Herbert, and family, from the Seeblick in Nassereith.
As a brief fast forward, we are somehow in a gasthof tonight as well. I went to see the proprietor to say we had arrived. His first words to me - "Are your shoes clean?" Well at least Gabi had not phoned ahead to warn him to guard his forks!
The path out of Nassereith was again rocky gravel, making us again wonder if we had chosen an appropriate route for heavily loaded bikes with little wheels. Fortunately the path turned up a wide valley following the Gurglebach River and heading for the large town of Imst, where we would meet the river Inn, and old friend. Along this valley the paths were mostly paved. Though the valley was relatively flat, especially considering the tall mountains standing all around, there were enough hills to get our attention. In fact Dodie, who has perversely not been gaining strength during this ride, ended up walking a lot.
After about 15 km she asked me to check her brakes, because she felt as if they were on. Ok, so they were on, and I made an adjustment. It's all just good exercise, I claimed. Dodie seemed to feel it would be better not to have the brakes on. Ok, fine!
As we pedalled up the valley, we passed through little villages, while looking up at the alm, with its many huts (used, we have figured out, to store hay), and up up to tall (though not at all snow covered) mountains. The villages, the alm, and the mountains did succeed in giving the impression that we are in the Tirol. That is excellent, because we are in the Tirol. This is not to say that every house is a flower covered chalet, that everyone (or anyone) is wearing a robin hood hat with a feather in it, or that any yodelling is to be heard. Still, it is lovely.
There are lovely wood piles everywhere. Here is a rare look at people actually working on the wood.
The town of Imst, though, was not very impressive. It seemed shabbier than normal, and with streets rather jumbled. We stopped at the tourist information, because I had the idea that they might have a version of our great Via Claudia map in English. There have been lots of Via Claudia point of interest panels along the path, and all are in German, Italian, and English. The girl in the information had no cycle maps of the route, of any kind. None. All she could offer was an overview pamphlet, in German. I asked if this was also in English. After much rummaging in a bottom drawer, she could only come up with an Italian version. With a gentle harrumph, we stomped out of town.
Just out of town, the route swung by the Inn, which is presumably coming down from Nauders and of course rushing to Innsbruck and ultimately to the Danube at Passau. We now followed the Inn, again with some upping and downing. Dodie did far better on these, claiming some benefit of not having her brakes on.
We rejoined the Inn river, which had cycled along a lot in past years
The road and trail (and river) traversed a narrow valley, again passing through fairly picturesque villages with nice views to the hills and mountains. We seem to be planning to ride (or push) the Reschen Pass (rather than try the bus), so we called it quits at Landeck. That is just 41km for the day. We could have gone a little farther, but it is true - our daily range has for some reason become pathetic. Julia and Bjorn, we know, went to Nauders today. They however are just 50. Kids!
At home we have two varieties of blackberries - Himalayan and Evergreen. These here are more purple - are these Brombeeren? Schwartzbeeren? or something else?
This is a real roman road. There are theories about the grooves. One that sounds good is that the track width allowed a monopoly on the road use - you needed the right cart.
Landeck, like Imst, is not such an impressive place. It's buildings do not knock your socks off, and its layout is muddly. We could not find the camping, though admittedly we did not search too hard, given a forecast of rain. We did however find the Pension Thialblick. 60 euros - not too bad. The washroom is out in the hall. We actually like that better. Who wants a toilet basically in your bedroom?
We have yet to find out what the Thial part of the blick is. From our window, though, there is a fairly nice view. Also from our window we see the goats down below. That's swell, just so long as they are not planning on supplying milk for tomorrow's cheese!
A view from our window. We have now figured out that Thial is a nearby mountain.
