Austria for the high life

The woman with the cropped dyed red hair was very cross. She was gesticulating wildly and a stream of German was being directed my way, the only word of which I vaguely understood being "servietta". I was cutting a slice of freshly baked black bread at the breakfast bar of the Posthotel in the Tyrolean mountains. I looked across at the stack of nearby starched white napkins and realised my crime. I had touched the

Ah, well - if being reprimanded for desecrating the bread was the price I had to pay for the perfect hotel breakfast, I was happy to accept my punishment. Because after a lifetime of lukewarm tea and congealed eggs, here in the mountain village of Achenkirch I had found my culinary dream start to the day. During our 72-hour stay, this quirky family-run hotel and spa presented an unexpected clutch of perfect moments, but the breakfast was possibly the most highly savoured.

Envisage if you can being let loose on one of those big metal juicers, with baskets of homegrown carrots and apples beckoning you to slice them up and grind them through the machine. At the grill, a young girl was waiting to do what you wished with a basket of fresh eggs from the family farm. Nearby, small plump balls of steak (again from their estate) waited to be fried. Honey? I counted 10 homemade pots, not including an A3-size sheet of dark honeycomb that when combined with salty mountain butter on black brot was just about the best thing I've ever eaten.

Add to that plates of buttery croissants, local ham and cheese, bowls of fruit salad, 20 or so teas and a dozen freshly baked breads, and you have a memorable breakfast. And included in a daily room rate of just E155 per person is an equally delicious buffet lunch, cake-laden afternoon tea and three-course evening supper (the last time we tried to escape the exhaustion of family life together, two nights in Cowley Manor cost well over £1,000).

Considering the three ingredients for a great weekend are sleeping, eating and enough activities, it's amazing how many hotels get it wrong. At the Posthotel, if we weren't sleeping (the duvets were the feathery, crispy linen-encased type the Europeans do so well) or eating, we were spoilt for fun. My husband John, who is training for a triathlon, had some of the most spectacular scenery in which to run around (and get lost) or a state-of-the-art gym in which to train. I lounged on the indoor water beds reading in my white bath robe or stretched out in the sun by the pool, looking either at my toes or a mountaintop. Being the only Englishwoman there and a failed linguist, there was the added relaxation of not understanding anyone else (the guests are mostly German and Swiss).

Proving that after nearly 10 years of marriage we can still happily do things together, John and I would meet for an adventure around what the hotel's 29-year-old manager Karl Reiter (and he looked no older than

19) called its "water world". This would start in one of three indoor pools, with a swim that led through a James Bond-like water tunnel into an outdoor heated pool. It led to two-tiered smaller pools where we would wallow like seals on tiled seating carved into the pool wall and marvel at the view of the forests. Prune-like, we headed indoors to the sauna and steam rooms where we were forced to conquer our British paranoia of being naked in front of strangers. There were lots of notices which began with Achtung! and were full of incomprehensible 25-letter long words that made us giggle like children as we hopped from steam to sauna to jacuzzi to plunge pool hoping no one would see us.

The Germans/Austrians/Swiss love being naked about as much as they want everything clean and orderly, which makes them great hoteliers and exacting guests. I won't go on about the hotel spa because I think we're all fed up of reading about spas - suffice to say you can get a glorious 60-minute facial for about e60 in an atmosphere that is all scented candles and pale stone floors.

We discovered a masseur there called Richard, from Godalming, who had set out for Australia in 1964 but fell in love in Achenkirch and got no further. His trigger-point massage is a reason in itself for planning a return trip. We didn't find time for tennis or squash, to meditate with two Shaolin monks in the Zohrerhaus (very alternative for a hotel in such a Catholic part of Austria) or go for a 4am sunrise walk with Thomas from the kitchen, activities again included in the room rate.

Both horse lovers, we had planned a trek through the forest on the famous Lipizzaners - the hotel owns the largest privately owned Lipizzaner stud farm in Europe. Sadly, the heavens opened and we ended up practising dressage in the riding hall. Having been brought up in the Middle East riding lean Arab stallions, I found the big-bellied Lipizzaners rather cumbersome - but as this Austrian breed is about as sacred as the hotel's bread, I didn't dare say anything.

What I enjoyed most were our two excursions to the nearby lake, Achensee. On both afternoons we collected our bikes and set off down the flat valley from Achenkirch. Towered over by mountains on either side, the road wound through hamlets where old couples eyed you silently outside their flowery painted houses, amid fields where herds of cows wore huge cartoonlike bells and beside streams that ran so clear that you could see every pebble and stone.

It's hard to believe empty roads, lakes full of fish and clean mountain air still exist within a twohour flight from London. Austria seems to have retained all this and more. But a word of warning - don't touch the brot. It's verboten.

WAY TO GO
Posthotel Resort & Spa (0043 52466522, www.posthotel.at) has doubles from E310 full board and use of facilities. easyJet (0905 821 0905, www.easyjet.com) has daily returns from Stansted to Munich from £47.98. Transfers (125km) from e110.