Buchberg

I have been endeavouring to go hiking as much as possible in the autumn and early winter. I missed some of the best parts of autumn in September while gallivanting around greece, but I wasn't going to let the whole of the most beautiful and least hot season trickle away!

At the beginning of November we had the last of some pretty sunny and relatively warm weather, and today's images are taken from a hike taking advantage of the beautiful yellow, slanting winter sun. This hike was in the Wienerwald, but a little further west from Vienna than many of my hikes taken from my trusty hiking bible. Out this far, everything is definitely rural. The small town of Neulengbach at which we started the hike featured a pleasant old schloss, and while leaving the immediate surroundings of the town we passed a few horseriders and sunday walkers, as well as a horse paddock inexplicably next to a whole pile of mouldering ex-vienna transport buses...

The scenery of this hike reflected its location on the edge of the Wienerwald, just before the more open fields rolling down towards the Danube north of Vienna. The imposing, triangular lookout tower on the Buchberg, the destination of our walk, provided a fantastic view; out north over the rolling fields towards the Danube and Melk; southwest towards the capital of Niederoesterreich, St Poelten; and southeast towards the peaks of the limestone Alps, the striking (and by now actually snowy) Schneeberg among them.

Here you are then, a link to another small gallery of pictures of a hike in Austria. The scenery is a bit different in this one, and I'm really happy with some of these capturing the combination of undulating ground, the lines of the fields and the afternoon sun!

Der Tom