Highline 179 – Austria

During our recent trip to Germany where we were camping in Schwangau, Bavaria, about 10 minutes away from Neuschwanstein Castle, we had made plans to take the train and cable car to the top of the Zugspitze Mountain, the highest point in Germany at 2962 metres. We had hired a car and when we started planning our route to get there realised that the quickest way would mean dipping into Austria…boy were we in for a treat…the scenery on this route was absolutely amazing! It turned out to be a trip full of surprises.

We travelled south from Schwangau past Fussen along the route of the Lech river, then as we were approaching the border with Austria I caught a glimpse of an opening and the river to our right “What’s that?” I stopped pretty sharply and pulled into the parking area and we set our eyes on the first of many surprises of the day! Lechfall is where the river flows over an 18th century dam ladder then into a beautiful gorge!

There is a cool bridge which crosses the river here so you are able to get a really cool view over the river and into the gorge, you can continue your walk into the woods on the other side of the river as well, we didn’t stay for too long though because we were still eager to push on to get into the mountains.

We crossed over the border into Austria and the views really began to open up…couldn’t get The Sound of Music out of my head…never even seen it! We took the B179 and continued on our way, the road was pretty cool running between a cliff face on one side and a steep hillside the other, then I caught a glimpse of something which crossed above the road over us. “What the hell was that?” It had to be some sort of bridge but we couldn’t quite figure out exactly what it was. We pushed on further into Austria and the scenery just got more and more breathtaking.