On the Austrian Straight and Narrow - Pt 1

 More rambling recollections of a lost youth

The holiday really started in Loughborough, where I left my car
with friends and boarded the 12.21 to St. Pancras.

For someone who's never kept a diary I seem to have quite a few long-lost written records of parts of my life - mainly trips and holidays. The latest to emerge, together with supporting photographs, are of a trip I made to Austria in 1982.

The book that was my inspiration

This was the first time I'd ever been on a foreign holiday on my own. I was inspired by a book "Austrian Travel Wonderland" published a few years earlier with details of scenic - and not so scenic - railway lines, including extensive narrow-guage systems as well as alpine post bus routes. I no longer have the book, but do remember that I used it as the basis for planning my holiday in terms of what to visit and where to stay.

Not having travelled alone before and having only a smattering of  the German language I wasn't confident enough to set off without a plan.  I knew that there would be no inclusive holidays that would suit my needs. Nobody was offering trips to the obscure and relatively non-scenic parts of Austria where the lines I wanted to sample ran, much less the industrial areas and suburbs of large cities where I could find some trams and trolleybuses.  I think I must have done much of the timetable planning in Manchester's Central Reference Library, which at the time had an extensive collection of British and European bus and train timetables and I certainly had at least an outline plan for most days. For hotel accommodation I managed to obtain a brochure from the Austrian Travel Centre, also in Manchester, and wrote off to hotels in my chosen overnight stops to book a room. 

The hotel I'd chosen in Salzburg was fully booked, but the proprietor made a booking for me at another one nearby, whilst my choices in Linz and Graz were available. The bookings were taken on trust, with no advance payment or even a deposit required. How slow and primitive this now seems in the internet age - but it worked!

There was only one snag. The brochure didn't include any hotels in my first overnight stop - the small town of Jenbach - but as I'd now booked everywhere else I decided I'd just have to be brave and deal with that on the day.

I ordered my rail tickets at the Continental Travel Centre at Manchester Piccadilly - a single from London to the border station at Feldkirch and a single back from Vienna and also sent off for an "Austria Ticket", which would allow me unlimited travel on the whole of Austria's railway network including the privately-owned narrow guage and local lines I wanted to see.

For some reason after setting off from Preston, where I then lived, I first spent a weekend with friends in Loughborough (where I left my car) and then a day with my friend Mark (who accompanied me on various trips to the German Democratic Republic and Poland a few years later) who was then living in Tooting.

So it was not until Tuesday, 3rd August 1982 that I was ready to depart.

to be continued...