Hallstatt

Hallstatt is a tiny village in the Austrian Alps, about 60kms from where we’re staying in Mondsee. Despite its small size and remote location Hallstatt has a long-standing history as the salt-mining capital of Europe. Left over from ancient inland seas formed hundreds of millions of years ago, the salt is still mined today.

Unfortunately the weather has been atrocious.  Heavy rain and cool, so an underground tour of the Hallstatt salt mines was the obvious choice for the day.   Actually – the mines aren’t so much under the ground as within the mountain and here’s where the tour started….

Up the funicular to the entrance to the salt mine

And then it was a bit of a walk through the mist and rain

Before the tour began we all got kitted out.  It is a constant eight degrees in the mines, but that’s only part of the reason we needed these threads…..

Smurfs ready for action

Within the mines are two wooden slides and these outfits are designed to allow efficient sliding (as Jeremy discovered as he whizzed down slide number two at 33.9 km/hr).

Our guide for this tour was the complete opposite of yesterday’s. Now I don’t want to sound mean, but this guy was most definitely in the wrong job.  He was dull and uninspiring and given the surroundings were dim, dark and damp a little ray of sunshine would have gone a long way.

Still –the tour was good and as well as the slide we rode a mini-train, saw two films and walked about through about a kilometer of tunnels – all within the mountain of course.  At the end of the tour we all got our own little sample of salt.   Now we just need to find some chippies J.

The tiny picturesque town of Hallstatt