With the Danube music festival
- Combines country walks through some of the glorious countryside of the Danube valley with seven concerts of the Danube Music Festival.
- Participants must be in good physical condition and used to country walking. There are between 3 and 8 miles a day.
- There are three hotels and quite a lot of coaching (average 72 miles a day).
Walking remains incomparably the best mode of locomotion through scenery on which the eye would like to linger. Only on foot can one stop at will to savour a panoramic vista or to zoom in to a flower, hear the birds or smell the earth. Hiking is also an efficacious route to fitness and relaxation – every step sharpens the body and pushes away quotidian cares.
Not everyone possesses walking boots, not everyone would like to attend a concert on nearly every day of their holiday. But those for whom country walking and music are favoured pursuits should take an interest in this tour. It combines both in a uniquely symbiotic way.
The itinerary is planned around the Danube Music Festival (though participants stay in hotels, not the ship). It includes seven of its nine concerts. Most of the walks terminate at a concert venue (though the plan is more complicated than that: sometimes there is the opportunity to freshen up at the hotel before the concert).
The valley of the Danube and its hinterland provide much beauty and variety of landscape – cultivated lowlands, fearsome forested peaks, open alluvial plains, vine-clad hillsides, upland pastures, and, of course, the mighty river meandering towards the Black Sea. There is woodland – pine and fir and larch of course but predominantly broad leaf, beech, birch, oak, poplar. Even in August wild flowers abound, as do fauna, birds in particular but also various furry things and scufflings in the hedgerows.
The concerts all feature music of the former Austrian Empire performed by world-class musicians in historic buildings selected for their beauty and appropriateness.
There is more time at the locations of the concerts than is allowed to ship-borne participants of the Festival, and the leader will talk about the buildings visited.
Though not especially strenuous – there are hills, a few of them steep, but no mountains – this tour should only be considered by those who are used to regular country walking, preferably with some uphill content.