What do you do when you twist an ankle on the first day of your walking holiday in Austria? Despite my bad luck the day before, when I missed my footing in the Gaistal Valley, I was determined not to let my sore ankle spoil our hiking with Headwater Holidays. The more strenuous walks over the high passes might be out of the question, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t scale the mountain tops. Consulting the ‘1 boot’ walks in the Headwater walking notes, we realized that with the cable car, we could get up to Seefelder Spitze at 2221 meters with just a moderate amount of walking at the top. All the views with half the effort!

The bus from Hotel Xander to Seefeld took us in 15 minutes to this pretty town, which was an important stop on the trading route between Innsbruck and Mittenwald and is now a popular base for both winter skiing and summer hiking. From the main square with its elegant church, pedestrian streets radiated out, filled with pavement cafes and shops to entice visitors enjoying the late summer sunshine.

From the town center, we walked up the hill to the funicular, which took us halfway up the mountain to the Rossehutter station. From there, we took the cute red cable car right up to the top at Seefeld Joch. The cable car left us at one end of the saddle with views down towards Seefeld, and we had fun trying to spot the speck of Hotel Xander in the valley beyond. On the other side of the saddle, we could look down into a much wilder valley clothed in green forest streaked with brown shale where the rocks had fallen down the mountainside.

Seefeld now looked like a toy town in the valley below, set in the bowl of the mountains. With ski lifts going up in all directions, it was obvious why this was such a popular winter ski resort. We followed the gravel path along a ridge as it climbed towards a rocky point where I gingerly climbed over using the metal handrails. The way broadened out again along the ridge until we finally reached the peak of Seefelder Spitze at 2221 meters, with views of the shadowy shapes of mountains layered one behind the other in the misty distance.

From the cross, we could clearly see the path that the more challenging ‘2 boot’ walk suggested by Headwater would take. It ribboned across a precariously steep slope of shale with no vegetation, and nothing to stop the unwary from falling down the slope, should they lose their footing. No wonder walking poles were highly recommended for this stretch! With my sore ankle, there was no way I could attempt it, and even if I’d been fully fit, I might have thought twice.

Instead, we took the path back down the way we had come and returned by the cable car to the Rossehutte station. We sat on the balcony of the cafe with a beer, watching the people sunning themselves on deckchairs and the children bouncing on trampolines. These mountain stations are surprisingly busy and popular spots for families to come up the mountain for a bit of weekend fun.

Once we’d finished our beers, we decided to try another cable car to Harmelekopf-bergstation, a stop used mainly as a jumping-off point by hang-gliders. Unfortunately, we misjudged the timing and took the last cable car up, giving us only 10 minutes to look around before it was time to take the last one back. We shared the cable car with two hang gliders who came in with big rucksacks, and since they did not come back down with us, we assumed they had hang-glided away over the valley.

From there, it was straight down on the funicular and back into Seefeld, where we explored some of the side streets with pretty painted buildings in the late afternoon sunshine. We joined the many people relaxing in the pavement cafes, trying a delicious wild berry ice cream in a very cute cafe before catching the bus back to Hotel Xander.

Nice as it is to have an evening meal provided as part of your package, sometimes you want to try something different. We decided to celebrate our day conquering the mountain in a traditional Austrian restaurant called Dorfstadl that was a short walk away in Weidach. Although tucked in the grounds of the modern leisure center, the restaurant was like an overgrown wooden cabin of the kind you’d expect to find halfway up the mountain.

We both ordered the local ‘Hugo’ aperitif of elderflower with white wine spritz and stuck to the recommendation we’d been given of venison stew with dumpling for Julia and an excellent steak with wild mushrooms for me. It felt as if the restaurant was easing into the autumn season since all the dishes on the ‘special’ menu were made with wild mushrooms. Although we were pretty stuffed, we managed to share an apple strudel, purely for the purposes of comparison with all the other apple strudels that are served in every Austrian restaurant. We were definitely on a quest to find the perfect apple strudel!

At the other end of the restaurant, there was a wedding party in full swing with all the ladies in their dirndls, including a white wedding dirndl for the bride. We got the full benefit of the band singing all the yodel songs, which even Julia, who speaks good German, couldn’t understand since they were half in dialect.

It was fun to join in the wedding celebrations, and I was pleased that my ankle hadn’t spoiled our walk. Despite it, we’d scaled the mountain peaks and would have plenty more walks to explore and things to see in the Leutasch Valley.