Goodbye to Schladming

One of the fondest memories I will have of Schladming will be the evenings spent sitting on the hill with a wine or beer in hand overlooking the little township with the Dachstein in the background.

A picture of what I expect see a lot of on this trip. Sam with a beer in is hand at the end of a day.

We went to the mechanic first thing in the morning. The water pump and labour was going to cost 220 Euros. Ummm. Without a car though, we would be stranded without wheels which would make carting hang gliders painful. Since we didn't have to put the car in to the garage till 1pm, Sam and I decided to still give a flight a go. We didn't want to cause more damage to the car so we only went the lower launch. About half the way up. The Dachstein is in the background.

It was a short and bumpy flight. The launch wasn't actually that high. About 10mins I think. Since we didn't have a car to pick us up, we had to carry the harnesses back to our house on the hill. It was actually quite a nice walk, following a river back through town were a there was a market with a short stop for an ice cream on the way. We made the mistake of taking a short cut and walking directly up the hill. It was steep and gave the calf's a good little workout.

So in the end, it turned into more of hike than a flight. But looking back, the hike was actually really nice.

We picked up the car in the afternoon. It was purring again. Happy days. After an evening curry courtesy of Richard, we say goodbye to Schladming and made tracks back to Skyline. We will leave Carol and Olli here and head off on our own into the big wide world of the Alps.