A group of designer cows lounges across the walking trail ahead of us. Fashionable shades of taupe and ecru, bony hips and eyelashes to die for, they are not about to move aside for us. They gaze at us haughtily as we detour around them through the soft wet grass of their pasture.
The cows are not the only things of beauty here in the small town of Lech and its upper extension Oberlech in the Vorarlberg region of western Austria. Known as a winter skiing wonderland, ski champions, celebrities and royalty visit regularly and the winter holiday scenes from Bridget Jones' Diary 2 were filmed here. But forget freezing temperatures and snow. Summer here in the Arlberg mountains is equally gorgeous, with soaring peaks, alpine hiking and hillsides carpeted with wild flowers. There's more beauty here than you can shake a stick at - or a hiking pole, for that matter.
With all those celebrities and royalty, Lech has some grand old hotels like the family run Berghof, the Romantik Hotel Krone sitting large and solid beside the Lech River, the fourstar Hotel Gotthard or the highest hotel in Lech, the Mohnenfluh (1,750 metres) with its beautiful sun patio. Our budget runs to an impeccably run B&B perched above the town in Oberlech ("upper Lech") with sweeping views of the area's most dramatic peak, the 2,350-metre Rüfikopf. We're away from the bustle of Lech but the marvellous Lech "Active Inclusive" card (available late June to early October) allows us free use of local cable cars, chair lifts, buses, swimming pools, driving range, leisure centre and more. It's a huge bonus, tough to believe it's all free, and we take every opportunity to use it.
We shop via cable car gondola; zip up and down on chair lifts to some of the hundreds of walking trails up in the Petersboden area or pop down to the village to take in local events and concerts. The car gets lonely, parked at the B&B, while we commute by cable car so frequently, the lift operators start greeting us like family members.
The area is a real playground for sporty types, with a huge choice of activities including rafting, mountain biking, climbing, hiking, fishing, jogging, golfing, paragliding, tennis and Nordic walking. We feel exhausted just contemplating the options. We decide on some relatively sedate walking: the Lech area alone has some 250 kilometres of well-marked trails. We find the seven-kilometre Zwei Täler Rundweg (Two Valley Loop), a network of easy walking trails that wind through those cow pastures beneath the towering bulk of the mountains.
As we rest on a sunsoaked bench, the solemn "klonk" of cowbells is the only sound we hear. One hour further along in the direction of Warth is Bodenalpe, a small cabincum-restaurant that is open only in summer. Our hiking has given us huge appetites and Bodenalpe's menu is worth the walk, offering local favourites like Gröst'l (onion, potato, bacon hash topped with an egg) or Käsknöpfle (an upscale, made-fromscratch version of mac-cheese with carmellized onions).
Craving that Sound of Music mountain solitude (and time to digest), we ride a chairlift up to where trails crisscross the peaks in endless patterns. Here we can get as far away from people as we wish, calves straining and hearts pumping in the pure alpine air. We sit admiring the distant Rüfikopf, with acres of wildflowers colouring the meadows at our feet: mountain cornflower, goldenrod, heart's ease, wild orchids. This prolific blooming period is called the "Blütezeit" and it's a fairyland of colour: yellows, whites, pinks, purples and blues that range from cornflower to harebell.
Our pace slows in the heat of the day. We arrive at Kriegeralpen, a pub with a sun terrace and the promise of live music. Its rustic timbers huddle in a small dip in the landscape in the middle of nowhere, but with its long rows of wooden tables, it's obviously a well-known watering hole for hikers in these parts. It's crowded with patrons enjoying an afternoon beer with super-sized soft pretzels.
The serving staff wear traditional Dirndls and Lederhosen and, in European fashion, people bring their dogs, which lounge around beneath the benches. The entertainers start to belt out American standard rock 'n' roll favourites, the music so unexpected that we feel caught in a cultural time warp. Much as we love Credence Clearwater Revival, they really don't fit the surroundings. We move on, awestruck, through scenery that moves from simply drop-dead-gorgeous to truly stupendous. It makes you want to put on one of those Julie Andrews costumes and burst into song.
In between our hikes, we explore Lech's historic St. Nicholas Church, dating from about 1390, with its mysterious rune stones and landmark 33-metre onion-shaped dome. We spend a couple of hours exploring the small museum in the Huber House, with its fascinating insights into the area's history and how people lived here before the mod cons that we now take so much for granted. It was a harsh existence and the town's very existence was often in question. In fact, 100 years ago, Lech was dying and needed a new career in order to survive. Tourism was a leap of faith back then: visitors came by horse cart and sleigh from the railway station over in Langen. If avalanches threatened, they simply took the bells off the horses to make less noise.
Back in the sunshine, we stroll Lech's main street with its babbling brook and picture-perfect buildings, brightened by scarlet geraniums cascading from window boxes. We sit in a small plaza, toes tapping to traditional oompah music played by a local band, the men in crisp white stockings and felted jackets, the women in quaint headdresses and silver buckled brogues. On Sunday afternoon, we attend the annual village festival. A keg of beer is broached by the mayor in traditional costume and the frothy contents shared out. We stand, squashed shoulder to shoulder with the locals, whose good humour increases in direct relationship to the sharing of that cask of beer.
But it's dairy farming, not beer, that is the region's most important source of income. Making cheese is a symbol for local culture and a life lived in harmony with nature, so we cannot miss Lech's famous cheese and meat shop (Speck-Käsekeller). Its tiny space is packed with smoked hams, cured sausages and local honeys alongside some 40 local artisan cheeses like Alpkäse, Räskäse or Ziegenkäse. Those dewy-eyed bovines are not just pretty faces: they munch on a smorgasbord of herbs and grasses up here between 1,100 and 2,000 metres and provide the raw material for all those cheeses, butters and yogurts.
On our final evening, the light softens as the clouds tuck the mountains into bed. Quietly contemplating the giant contours of the Rüfikopf, we notice that those supremely contented, designer-taupe cows are making their way home to be milked, ambling gently and unerringly into their personally reserved slots in the byres. They are pampered creatures, as we too have been pampered in the pristine mountain air. We didn't need snow, after all, in order to fall in love with Lech.
If you go: Good information on getting to Lech can be found at wikitravel.org orvorarlberg. travel. The area can be accessed by highway, plane or train.
Official website: lechzuers.at Lech Information Office has all manner of maps and information, many of which are in English. Email: [email protected] The Lech Active Inclusive card. Available June to October. Ask your hotel or B&B to arrange this through the tourism office in advance of your arrival, using the information you give on the accommodation registration form. The card is valid on the day of arrival as well as the day of departure, but you must stay at least one night in the area. There is a small deposit for the card, refunded when you return it to any of the issuing points.
