You can call me Michael Fish

Not that I predict sunny weather when a hurricane is around the corner, but
I do get it wrong occasionally. Sunday night we had very heavy rain
non-stop. We awoke to see the river from Noddy and we had never seen it from
our pitch before. It was up 2 metres or so and not far from reaching the
tents and caravans on the pitches along the waters edge. It had already
flooded over the footpath on the bank the other side. The water was moving
at quite a pace and was carrying all sorts of debris including quite large
chunks of wood that just seemed to bob like little wine corks. It continued
to rain most of the day, but lighter, and Robert the site owner was always
around to keep any eye on the water level, as were many people with their
cameras and videos. I think it was pretty close to becoming a site
evacuation but luckily with only light rain for the rest of the day the
water level eased just a little bit. Some people who had just arrived
decided to leave and look for better conditions, although I am not sure
where as I think most of Europe is under a big black cloud at the moment.
Anyway, over the next few days the rain stayed light with the odd glimpse of
the sun and by the end of the week the river was back to normal again. Big
sighs of relief all round, except of course for Robert as all the bad
weather had obviously put many people off going camping and the site was
quite empty by Saturday. It has probably hit him and other tourist
accommodation quite badly this year as the 4-6 weeks peak season has been
mostly washed out.
We still managed to do some cycling, and I headed off for a 35 mile round
trip on Thursday. It was sunny on the way but I got rather soaked on the way
back as the heavens opened. It was nice to have a warm and dry Noddy waiting
for me on my return.
Yesterday as the sun was out we decided to move on and head west towards
Innsbruck. It was a nice drive with the sun out and shining. We stopped off
at Kitzbuhel on the way. It is a nice pretty town and full of wealthy sorts
with plenty of nice shiny Mercedes and Porsches lining the streets. It would
be quite a nice place to be in the winter with snow all around and all the
après ski to get stuck into, although I am not sure if we are posh enough!
Our new site is in the town of Hall-in-Tirol a few miles east of Innsbruck.
It is quite a nice old medieval town and hopefully we will get into to see
it if the weather permits. Today we took a bus into Innsbruck. It was a bit
gloomy early on but the sun made a good long appearance for the middle of
the day. The city is fairly nice especially the old parts that are quite
colourful, but the rest is pretty drab and much like any other city. We had
a good wander around and popped into a few shops here and there. We had
coffee and cake in a Vienna style coffeehouse. The cake was very nice but
the place itself was very smoky. Austria does not seem to have a non-smoking
policy in bars and restaurants unlike Italy where it is banned. For lunch we
had some nice traditional Tyrolean food. Pizza. Well they eat a mix of
Austrian and Italian food in the Tyrol. Sue had a good day in the shops. She
is now the proud owner of a nice new pair of Adidas sandals. She has been
looking for some new shoes for 6 months! (Sue -yep I've been wearing my
multi coloured flip-flops that I bought for shower shoes for £1.50 last
July).
Anyway, it is raining again now, surprise.
Cheers
M&S