Mountain air takes breath away

IT IS difficult, almost impossible in fact, to imagine a more beautiful place to be in the world than high in the mountains of Austria – except maybe being sat opposite supermodel Gisele Bundchen in a jacuzzi sipping champagne that is!

I know the air is thinner at 1,677 feet elevation, where the clouds are almost in touching distance (even for me!), but it quite simply takes your breath away – unless your name is Russell Hoult.

While his new team-mates were sat in silent awe as the coach carried the Magpies’ squad away from Salzburg airport, steadily east through the Dachstein Mountains, past Lake Halstatt and towards Obertraun, Hoult was jokingly trying to find out where the nearest bar is to the club’s training-base from the tour guide.

It was all lost in translation, however. Comically so.

It was raining, just like it had been before we boarded the plane back in Birmingham a few hours before. But that, together with the cloud mist, just made the short journey into the mountains even more exciting, even more a journey into the unknown.

There are days when covering Notts County feels like work – like on a wet and windy Saturday afternoon in Morecambe in January, for instance. And then there are days like this, when it isn’t work at all. Quite the opposite in fact.

There was a delay to the flight, an awful in-flight chicken meal (at least, I think it was chicken) and an eternal wait for baggage to come off the plane in Salzburg. But it suddenly didn’t matter when we arrived at our delightful destination.

It took seven long hours to get to the National Sports Centre, in Obertraun, from Meadow Lane. But it didn’t matter.

I have even got to sleep on a settee bed for the week, having lost a coin toss for a double bed to Tom Loakes. That doesn’t matter either, because I have an outstandingly beautiful part of the world as my office.

There is even a jacuzzi on site. All I need is Gisele to make the place even more beautiful than it already is.