As I’ve blogged before, sometimes we find the lack of information or maps when visiting places in Austria quite frustrating. Especially in the mining areas where there is so much still to see. Yesterday we took a walk around the hills in our village, where we knew at one point there was a quarry and an old stone crusher. On the way, we found that the signs on this path had finally been renewed and gave loads of information -when we could understand the German.
We stopped at the crusher, knowing there was a table there, to find that not only on the board were more mining details and a Nordic walking torture exercise board but also they had put up a history of the Marble crusher. Under the sign was a box with hammers in it and an invitation to go in the old quarry to hammer and chisel away and make your own sculptures! So well done Ramingstein for information given, and a wonderful disregard for Health and Safety, allowing common sense and fun instead!
We found a stretch further on where ‘stollen’ and little mines were actually cut into the hillside to remove the ore, just left as it was when they left a hundred years ago but overgrown. One was vertical into the ground, Dave only just missed putting his foot into it! Further down the hill is the Silver mine that can be visited, not a trip for claustraphobic me!
October 29, 2012 at 9:09 pm
We are quite lucky in the UK as we have the Ordnance Survey maps to refer to. Sometimes, it seems they map every inch of our green and pleasant land, including old mines and other earthworks.
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October 30, 2012 at 5:47 pm
Here its the opposite! Farmers often put new roads in for forestry and they never appear on the maps, the number of dead ends we’ve walked up!
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October 30, 2012 at 6:42 pm
Walking up a dead end extremely likely to ‘do my head in’ – I can’t bear to walk down a path that I have to come back on, most of my ‘outings’ are planned so I can come back along a different path. 😉
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November 5, 2012 at 9:25 am
We plan too, but it often doesn’t work. Sometimes the way marking, which is done in red and white paint has worn away, or they only mark the path in one direction. Then sometimes we see another path that looks more interesting!
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November 5, 2012 at 5:20 pm
“Then sometimes we see another path that looks more interesting!” – the grass is greener on the other side working through I think! 😉
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