Our furthest destination from home was Zell am See in northern Austria, some 1600km or 1000 miles away. This location was chosen to complete the transition from the fairytale castles around Füssen to the mountains hosting Kehlsteinhaus (Eagle's nest) in Berchtesgaden, to the true alpine scenery in Zell am See with the Schmittenhöhe Mountain and its views of over 30 mountain peaks over 3000m.

The journey from Berchtesgaden to Zell am See was relatively short at 80km and should only have taken an hour and a quarter but there were some admin hurdles to overcome in crossing into Austria. A 'vignette' is needed if you drive on an Austrian autobahn and there are some particularly notorious speed cameras en-route to our destination. Some very careful planning therefore had to be carried out to ensure that our route avoided autobahns (and other special tunnels) and that the locations of speed cameras were carefully identified in advance.

So far, so good but on entering a small village along the only road to our destination we came to a standstill. Only a few minutes ahead of us a truck had left the road and was perched precariously at about 30 degrees to the vertical. The emergency services were called who closed the road and it took 3 hours to clear it. In the meantime, I struck up an interesting conversation about British cars with a Swiss resident who was driving back from a 'Mini' convention (the International Mini Meet), this year in Poland.

Eventually we arrived in Zell am See, which as its name implies is a town on the lake Zell and as we discovered, is a massive winter ski resort with some 60 ski lifts, a small number of which operate during the summer for hikers, paragliders and general tourists. We only had one full day here which required a trip up the Schmittenhöhe Mountain, followed by a tour of the relatively small town. Even in the summer, this is absolutely full of tourists with the town centre mainly composed of hotels, restaurants and tourist shops. Still, it has history dating back well over 1000 years, is very pretty, especially when the sun comes out, and 3 times a week, the local council puts on a free music and water show on the edge of the lake. It also happened to be a religious holiday and some locals were out in traditional costume, though unfortunately the opportunity to capture these with the camera didn't arise.

Images of Zell am See and the views from the Schmittenhöhe Mountain can be seen here.