travel
Straw power
and the glory
Let Tyrolean scenery boggle your mind while a
hay bath soothes your body, writes David Sharp
I
t’s 10 o’clock on a sunny Monday morning at the Wiesenhof Spa Hotel in the
Austrian Tyrol and I’m buried up to my
neck in a bath of moist, fermenting hay.
A rogue strand has given me the itchiest
nose in the world but I can’t free either of
my hands: they’re pinned to my sides. Like
a prone River Dancer, I lie trapped in a
prickly cocoon of sodden grass, immersed
in a flotation tank.
The spa therapist, Edith, rabbits enthusiastically about her recent golfing trip to
Auchterarder as she covers me in armfuls
of warm hay, packing it under my arms and
chin, wrapping me in a muslin sheet to
prevent itching (too late!) and pulling the
top cover of the inflatable plastic waterbed
over me like a shroud. I am then lowered in
a mechanical sling into a bath of warm
water. It’s like being straitjacketed in a
collapsed paddling pool and set adrift in the
Dead Sea.With Worzel Gummidge
for company.
Edith puts on a CD that sounds
like a lonely Austrian pan-piper’s
dying lament, solemnly instructs
me to “relax for 20 minutes” and
tiptoes out of the room leaving
me engulfed in hay and wearing
just a pair of paper underpants
and a vaguely bemused smile.
It’s my first time at a wellness
hotel and I’ve always had the
sneaking suspicion most spa
treatments are fundamentally
silly. I expect to hear sniggering
from the corridor outside with
the therapists doubled up at the
comical predicament of their
latest victim.
In truth I have to stop myself laughing as
I squirm around like an amateur Houdini,
finally wrestling half of one arm free. Itch:
scratched. The relief is immense.
The Alpenheubad (hay bath) is an ancient
restorative treatment which is a speciality
of this and the neighbouring Italian South
Tyrol region. Hundreds of years ago the
shepherds and farmers of the region slept
in haylofts in the mountains. Over time they
discovered that, despite long hours of manual
labour, they rarely suffered from arthritis or
rheumatism. Soon doctors were prescribing
hay baths as a cure for ailments as diverse
as arthritis, cellulite and obesity.
It’s damnably hot under my shroud.
Sweat streams from my pores and the juice
from the special grass – which contains
medicinal herbs such as thyme, arnica,
silverweed and gentian – washes over my
skin, cleansing it of toxins.
“Tired?” Edith asks, when she returns.
“Exhausted,” I murmur. In a hazy state of
relaxation I sleepwalk past her into the
spacious relaxation room to recline on a
lounger and allow the healing properties of
the hay to work their magic. The glass-walled
room allows a jaw-dropping panorama of
the Karwendel mountains which envelop
the idyllic village of Pertisau in a craggy
Alpine embrace.
Pertisau-am-Achensee, to give it its full
title, is a village of barely 100 properties in
the lap of an expansive valley on the shore
of Lake Achensee, around 25 miles from
Innsbruck. The oldest resort in the Austrian
Tyrol, the village first became popular after
Emperor Maximilian I built his country residence, the Furstenhaus, here in
1466. Tourism took off in the
19th and 20th centuries as the
village built a reputation as a
climatic spa. Sigmund Freud
was a visitor, combining gentle
rambling with heavy thinking.
English children’s author
Elinor Brent-Dyer set her Chalet
School series of books in Pertisau
after holidaying here in the
1920s. From my room I can see
Brent-Dyer’s original holiday
chalet, once the Hotel Alpenhof,
now shuttered in disrepair on
the opposite edge of a verdant
pasture from the Wiesenhof.
Originally a 17th-century
farmhouse, the Wiesenhof is
now a family-run hotel and spa. The owners
are Johannes Entner (known as Hansi), a
tremendously affable man whose benign,
ever-present smile gives him an uncanny
resemblance to Roger Federer in the immediate aftermath of winning Wimbledon, his
horse-mad wife Alexandra, and their two
teenage children, Johannes and Katarina.
Hansi took over the running of the hotel
from his father in 2000. Since suffering and,
miraculously, surviving seven heart attacks
and undergoing almost as many bypass
operations, the Entners decided to set up a
small Cardiac Wellness Centre which offers
programmes to help prevent heart disease,
especially for those at high risk, and to treat
patients recovering from heart attacks.
I am left
engulfed in
hay, wearing
just a pair
of paper
underpants
and a
bemused
smile
40 the herald magazine 14.04.12
Pertisau, on the
shores of Lake
Amsee, is the oldest
resort in the Austrian
Tyrol and the setting
for Elinor Brent-Dyer’s
Chalet School books
photograph: jon arnold
images/alamy
Coronary heart disease kills around 8000
people in Scotland every year. The death rate
is among the highest in western Europe.
Born and bred in 1970s Scotland on a
diet of sweets, crisps and fried food, I was
granted free lifetime membership to an
established risk group. Like Woody Allen,
I’m not a hypochondriac, I’m an alarmist,
so the thought of a full cardio check-up rocks
me with an anxious tremor. I have two days
to still my beating heart with a battery of spa
treatments and vow to choose the “good for
the heart” food options on the daily menu.
Unlike many spas, the Wiesenhof has a
refreshingly down-to-earth appeal. This is
far from purgatory: there are no banned
foods or drinks. Typical Tyrolean cuisine is
travel notes
Getting there and
where to stay
David Sharp stayed at the Wiesenhof
Hotel, Pertisau, Austria. A Steinol
introductory package costs £210 per
person for two nights including luxury
half-board. Visit http://wiesenhof.at/
en. EasyJet has return flights from
Glasgow to Innsbruck, via London
Gatwick, from around £200, and
return flights from Edinburgh to
Munich from around £140. Visit www.
easyjet.com. The Wiesenhof Hotel
arranges transport to and from
Munich or Innsbruck airports, a twohour or 45-minute drive respectively.
soporific facial and something called a
Honig-Zirben Bad – an invigorating honeyinfused Jacuzzi. In the dreamy lulls between
treatments I leave my prudery aside and go
native (signs instruct you to leave your
robe at the door) in the various sauna and
steam rooms.
In the Finnish sauna, converted from an
old beehive, I sweat like I’ve been helping
build the great pyramids. In reality I’ve
been busy doing nothing. I imagined I might
get bored doing so little, but it turns out I’m
exceptionally talented at lolling around
in a bathrobe.
hearty. Cheese and speck, the local juniperflavoured ham, abound at the lavishly
stocked buffet, decked out like a big family
kitchen, along with fresh salmon, an array
of salads and homemade bread. The idea,
Hansi says, is to wash it all down with
Bavarian wheat beer then have it pummelled
or sweated out of you at the spa.
Talking of which, a “massage mix” is the
second item on the prescription-like document handed to me when I checked into the
spa. Valentin, the masseur, gives me a
vigorous manipulation aided by a palmful
of the famous local Tyrolean steinol (shale
oil) balm. His nimble fingers deftly untie two
decades of existential knots from my neck
and shoulders and I slope off the slab, lissom
as an Olympic gymnast, to my next appointment, a break from pampering, at the Vitalberg Tyrolean Steinol Museum to trace the
origin of Valentin’s magical ointment.
Inside the dinky visitor centre, Hermann
Albrecht relates the incredible history of
the shale oil his family have been mining
for three generations since his grandfather,
Martin, a passionate collector of minerals,
chanced upon a series of thick oil shale lodes
in the high mountains of the Karwendel
range in 1902. The “black gold”, originating
from the fossilised remains of 180 millionyear-old marine life, was mined by hand
using the most rudimentary tools, crushed,
burned and distilled into shale oil. This
precious oil – found to have remarkable
therapeutic qualities (especially to treat
rheumatism, arthritis and skin complaints)
because of its high organic sulphur content
– was then hauled over the often impassable mountains in 25-litre cans using large
backpacks.
In 1925 Martin Albrecht was blinded by
acid from a cooling machine and Hermann’s
father and his two brothers took on the
work. The factory burned down twice. It
was dangerous, backbreaking work. It still
is today, although the Albrechts are at
least aided by modern mining technology
and four-wheel drive vehicles to transport
the oil.
Looking down at my hands, shamefully
softened, not hardened, from years of flitting
my fingers across a computer keyboard, it
is humbling to hear Hermann’s tales of the
hardship his family endured in establishing
their business.
My four-day stint at the Wiesenhof floats
by at a dreamy pace, lazy days punctuated
by some luxury spa treatment or other – a
And so the morning arrived for my dreaded
appointment at the Cardiac Wellness Centre,
housed in a small room adjacent to the spa.
Hansi (like Denis Lawson’s eccentric hotelier/accountant in Local Hero, he seems to
be everywhere at once) opens the door and
beckons me in.
I lie on a gurney and Hansi plugs me into
his cardio machinery to calculate my
personal Fit-Level – my weight, body mass
index, age, sex, frequency of training and
so-called cardio stress index, which indicates how stressed your cardiovascular
system is – are all totted up and the final
arithmetic reveals a score of eight, with 10
being very fit. Not bad, considering my
enthusiastic role in the extensive Bavarian
beer-tasting session Hansi (who else?) had
hosted the night before.
Buoyed by my clean bill of health I embark
on a jog round the beautiful Lake Achensee,
framed dramatically by the Karwendel
mountains to the west and the Rofan range
to the east. Part-frozen in the winter, the
largest lake in the Tyrol comes alive in
the summer; its deep-blue shimmering
waters flecked with the sails of yachts, kites
and windsurfs. For cyclists, outstanding
trails around the lake shores form part
of the popular Via Bavarica Tyrolensis
mountain bike route, which runs from
Munich to Verona.
On my return leg round the neck of the
fjord-like lake I watch a cable car glide up
through the cerulean sky to the Zwolferkopf
mountain’s peak, 1500m above Pertisau, a
beginner’s starting point in winter for
skiing and snowboarding. The kindly blue
and red runs offer little scope for adventurous downhill skiing, but that is exactly its
relaxed, family-oriented appeal. Instead
the area is a magnet for serious cross­c ountry skiers (Langlaufer) who skate
up and down the 124 miles of routes
along the valley floor and between the
Karwendel mountains.
Back at the Wiesenhof the reward for my
exertions is to watch the twilight creep
across the mountains from the snug haven
of my Tyrolean shale oil bath – courtesy of
the Albrechts’ Sisyphean toil.
The ancient shale contains active agents
from long-extinct ammonites: primeval
marine animals. Millions of years of geology
are combining to soothe my weary bones.
Outside, penlight stars begin to twinkle
through the soft diffused light of the evening
sky and Pertisau is bathed in a lunar silence.
I’m so relaxed I bet if Dr Hansi measured
my resting heart rate now it would be like
Usain Bolt’s. Who said spa treatments were
silly? Not me. n
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14.04.12 the herald magazine
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