Marc and I may have tried too hard on our first day of walking. Our legs were a bit tired when we woke up the following morning. We decided to walk along a circular route around the countryside near Kastelruth, rather than climbing another one of the main mountains.

We attempted one of the routes given to us by Inn Travel, but then went off course (by mistake.) Once we’d gone the wrong way, we made up our own route around and over a mini mountain. It is labelled Katzloch-Bühel on our map, but as it was only 1170m, I doubt locals even count it as a mountain. I googled it to check I have the right name for the mountain and couldn’t find any images of it…so maybe hills have to be over 2000m before they count as mountains here!?

Anyway! We woke up and had a leisurely breakfast before setting out from Kastelruth to walk towards the beautiful Mount Schlern/Sciliar. She was a little shy early in the morning so kept ducking behind a veil of clouds. However Mount Puflatsch/Bulacia (yesterdays mountain) was out sunbathing, so we had some smug moments thinking how far we had wandered the previous day. We walked past another beautiful church, St Valentin, and then headed over to the fields by Seis/Siusi.

The people of Seis/Siusi might be some of the luckiest folks on the planet! Look at the backdrop to their world! It would be amaaazing to live in the middle of such stunning scenery. Plus there is a rope-way from the town up into the mountains, so they can all visit the sky whenever they feel like it. Lucky, lucky sods. Our plan was to explore the town and take the rope-way the following day, so for now, we kept going in the other direction instead. We walked through a pathway lined with trees and flowers and past picturesque farms.

We saw orchards that were lined by a variety of wild flowers. There were also free-range chicken, ducks and children on view around each farm. It was all pretty idyllic. I think our route was supposed to head over to a different village. You can see the church (where we were meant to go) in the background of my photo of apples.

I am not sure if we just took a wrong turn, or if we had always planned to improvise our own route. Let’s say it was a deliberate error. Anyway, once we had worked out where we were on the map, we noticed that rather than just walking around Katzloch-Bühel, we could climb it. So we turned off into the trees to walk around and climb the mini mountain next to us.

Walking through the shady trees was gorgeous! Plus, stopping to take photos is a pretty good excuse to stop walking at catch your breath! Our map showed that there were three peaks, but none of them had an actual path to the top. We went off-piste to get as high as we could. I *think* we made it to the highest points. It was certainly high enough for a jumping photo.

The best views were not actually the peaks, as they were covered in trees. But every so often there would be a gap in the trees that would allow us to look down to Kastelruth. Or we could peek out to the other side of the mountains, or over to Mount Schlern/Sciliar. Once we finally emerged from the trees to descend back into the valley, we were treated to more pretty views and an owl sculpture. Clouds were starting to build up in the direction the wind was blowing from, so we took the most direct route back to the town.

As soon as we made it back to Kastelruth it started to rain. It was perfect timing. We used our time in the rain to shop for speck and to explore the town. However once we were hungry we could’t find many places that were still open to serve a late lunch. We opted for the least sensible lunch – ice cream sundaes. Now this is a good way to spend a honeymoon!!

Our hotel provided pretty amazing dinners every night, all included in the price. So just a few hours later we were treated to several courses of lovely South Tyrolean food.

By the time we had finished our dinner the sky was blue again, and the sunset had created a beautiful pinkish glow on the mountains. We had another walk for about an hour, just to wander up the hill and explore the town.

So that was the second day of our incredible holiday. We had ice-cream for lunch and climbed a mountain that may or may not count as a mountain. Perfect.