WERFEN
You could search the whole world over and never find a better picnic spot.
As the first rays of summer warm the Austrian Alps, the pastures are carpeted with fat buttercups and pink clover. Bees hum over them, and the clang of cowbells rings through a valley of spruce forest. The Tennen Mountains punch high above me, looking like the ramparts of a fantasy fort. I’m sitting in the meadows above Werfen,
an hour’s drive south of the regional capital of Salzburg, breathing in the dewy, pine-fresh morning air and digging my boots into the grass. I can make out the small Alpine market town far below: with its pastel-painted chalets and bauble-domed church, it fits neatly into the picture. It’s a view that makes me want to skip through the pastures with careless abandon, to yodel out loud. A view so perfectly etched, it’s like a film set. Hollywood thought so, too, as this is
where the picnic scene was filmed in the 1965 blockbuster The Sound of Music. English actress Julie Andrews, playing everyone’s favourite nun Maria, strummed her guitar through these fields to teach the curtain-clad von Trapp kids to sing Do-Re-Mi. The movie is Marmite, but the setting steals the show. And there is indeed a drop of golden sun as
Clockwise from top: The ‘picnic scene’ meadow on the Sound of Music Trail, with the Tennen Mountains behind; inside Hohenwerfen Castle; cows in the district of St Johann-Alpendorf, which includes Werfen Previous pages: Hohenwerfen and Werfen town above the Salzach River
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I walk along the gentle, hour-long Sound of Music Trail from Werfen to Gschwandtanger, an Alpine meadow above the town. I’m hiking with local tourist office manager Alexandra Hager, one of the trail’s pioneers, who tells me it’s been designed to shine a light on Werfen’s big-screen connections and cinematic beauty. But unlike the filming locations in Salzburg, which tend to be crowd favourites, up here it’s utterly peaceful. “It’s one of a kind,” says Alexandra, flinging an arm out as if to emphasise the beauty of
the scene. “I like to get up to Gschwandtanger early, when the air is fresh and the sun comes through the fog, or wind out the day sitting in the meadow on a balmy evening.” I look out and spot medieval Hohenwerfen
Castle sitting scenically on a hill above Werfen. This was the backdrop for another Hollywood cult classic, the 1968 Second World War spy thriller Where Eagles Dare, starring Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton. With its turrets and towers, the fortress seems more fit for a Disney princess. But neither action movie nor fantasy tale could match the real-life story of the building. On a guided tour of the castle’s courtyard
and vaulted, frescoed interiors, I learn that Hohenwerfen was commissioned in 1077, part of a castle-building spree in the Salzburg region in the wake of political unrest. Over 900 years, it’s been besieged, plundered and burned. During 16th-century peasant revolts, Protestant farmers were imprisoned in its dungeon. Under Bavarian rule from 1803, it fell to rack and ruin, only to be repaired as a hunting lodge in 1824. Nazi officers were trained here. And it’s only since 1987 that its doors have been open to visitors. The castle’s eagles, these days, appear in
bird of prey shows, swooping, screeching and whooping above the castle’s walls. Yet, I find my gaze drifting to the mountains that rise like a curtain above Werfen. I wonder if there are eagles up there, too.
On a high The next morning, sunrise makes the Tennen Mountains blush in purple-pinks. Though not especially high in Alpine terms, capping out at around 2,400m, these peaks are as wild
IMAGES: ALAMY; RICHARD JAMES TAYLOR/4CORNERS
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