Travel through Austria is easy via excellent roads or rail. No one should miss Salzburg (salt town) sitting on the Salz River. Its early importance came from its proximity to salt mines and to the river down which the salt was carried.
Its importance today comes largely from its baroque old town and annual music festival. The fact that Mozart was born and worked there gives added interest.
The entire old town of Salzburg is a living museum and just outside is a pleasure palace that appeals to all ages. Built by one of the archbishops of Salzburg, the place is replete with water tricks, deer whose horns spout water at unsuspecting passers-by, chairs that soak the sitter when a hidden valve is turned, grottos that shower the viewer. There is even a water-driven organ and a miniature village of wooden figures, all activated by water power.
The range of accommodation is wide, from farmhouse to castle and, in common with Germans and Swiss, cleanliness is a compulsion. What with the natural attractions, its history, its architecture, the music and the attractive people, Austria is a place that urges return visits. The affluent traveler can stop with a count in a bona fide palace (for a price).
If you prefer the train, continue along the High Street Austria Map to its junction with Roberts Hill, turn right and descend very steeply to a hairpin bend. Austria Map On the bend is a left turn, Station Road, which takes you to Winchelsea Station where there are trains to Hastings. It is hard to believe that Winchelsea was once at shore level, right by the sea, and an important port; the old town stood on a shingle spit on the seaward side of where the town is situated today. By the end of the twelfth century it had become one of the Cinque Ports and early in the thirteenth century was providing ten ships for the English fleet. The old town was, however, largely washed away by a great storm in 1287. Even before the storm, work had begun on a new town, to be built on the hilltop; on the orders of Edward I, it was laid out by the Warden of the Cinque Ports and the Lord Mayor of London with a view to its assisting the wine trade with France.
