Having a snowball fight in July
The next novel has gone out to my long-suffering supporters, who now find themselves obliged to read it and see what disagreeable things jump out at them. These people are worth their weight in gold. Of course, this means that this blog will soon become a marketing platform for the new book as its publication date approaches. Before that happens, I thought I’d post a few holiday pictures. In addition to the bonus of seeing the Ennstal Classic (see previous post), we had great fun in Austria before driving down to Croatia for a week of sun. To begin with, we visited the Dachstein Glacier, where youngest daughter was delighted to have a snowball fight in the middle of July:
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There are fossils here, too. Rocks which today sit nearly 3,000 metres above sea level were, between 45 and 145 million years ago, made from compressed silt on the ocean floor, and here are the remains of the creatures that lived then to prove it:
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We stayed in the village of Grobming:
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Later we climbed the Planai summit. Well, we took the cable car up the first 1,500 metres, but climbed the second 1,500:
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Then it was time to chuck everything in the back of the Voyager and drive 500km down the length of Croatia, to the village of Orebic. There is a monastery here halfway up the hill:
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If you climb up to it, you get these views:
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Orebic itself has some lovely 19th-century villas and a lighthouse which sits alone on its own island:
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Finally, we drove down a further 100km to Dubrovnik, to visit the old town there, with around three million other tourists. Croatia is a very beautiful country and Dubrovnik especially so, but it ain’t cheap, and due to the unforeseen and quite outrageous extra charges, I wasn’t able to get the shots I wanted. It was still a nice place to visit, though:
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