Three family houses sell Saturday to Saturday, which is why you would ask us to reserve a ten night Austrian Alps trip

Half of this you could arrange yourself in an evening. The other half, three family houses that sell Saturday to Saturday and are being asked for four nights and three nights on midweek dates, needs a telephone call in German at half past eight in the morning. That is the half we do when you reserve a ten night Austrian Alps trip.

• Whatever is agreed comes back to you in writing from the supplier, before any money moves.
• No card is asked for on this site and none is stored: the supplier takes payment on its own terms.
• A request sent through the form is answered in writing within one working day.

The half you can do in an evening, and the half you cannot

Set the honest number down first, because the whole catalog is sorted on it. About half of this week is yours for the taking. Your flights are yours anyway. A small car at the airport in Innsbruck takes five minutes to reserve and runs near 420 euro for ten days in August. Two of the three houses have reservation pages and take cards, and the walking needs no permit of any kind.

The other half is a telephone, in German, at inconvenient hours. In the first fortnight of August the family houses in these valleys sell Saturday to Saturday, half board, five or seven nights, and they publish nothing else. You want four nights in one and three in the next, arriving midweek. In season nobody refuses that by email; they simply stop answering email, because the person who reads it is also carrying plates. Somebody has to ring at half past eight in the morning and ask whether the Tuesday can be done. The same goes for the mountain guide for the one day on ice, whose August diary fills by Easter and who answers his phone standing in a car park, and for the small bus up to the road end at 1,900 m, which runs when it is asked to and is asked to by telephone the evening before.

That is what this office is for on this week. Not the plan. You could write the plan.

Three beds and the ground between them

Bed one is a valley house in the Otztal at about 1,350 m, four nights. From the airport at Innsbruck it is 85 km and a little over an hour when the motorway behaves, closer to two on an August Saturday. Days from here lean on the lifts, which run about 08:30 to 16:30; the eastern paths climb from 1,900 m to 2,700 m in roughly four hours, 800 m of ascent, and the same again on foot if you miss the last car down.

Bed two is East Tyrol under the Grossglockner at 1,325 m, three nights. The drive is near 200 km and a true three hours, including a 5.3 km toll tunnel under the Tauern ridge at about 13 euro for a car. This is the walking half of the ten nights. The valley road ends at 1,900 m and the ground above it is scree and old moraine, not meadow.

Bed three is a lake in the Salzkammergut at about 500 m, three nights, 230 km on. Water at 22 C, short days on foot, and Salzburg's airport 75 km away at the end of it.

From $3,220 per person covers the ten nights on half board, the guided day on ice, and the bus to the road end. It leaves out flights, the car with its fuel and tolls, lift tickets at 30 to 48 euro a day each, lunches, and the alpine club membership that changes what a hut charges. It is confirmed in writing before anything is held.

Afternoon storms and the two o'clock rule

August in these mountains is a morning sport. In a settled spell the valley floors at 800 m sit at 26 to 30 C, the freezing level runs somewhere between 3,500 and 3,800 m, and by eleven the cumulus is already stacking over the south walls. Storms build between two and five in the afternoon, often over one ridge while the next valley stays dry, and they arrive with hail and a ten degree drop inside twenty minutes. So the days start early: breakfast at seven, on the path by eight, off exposed ground by one.

Then there is the other August, which turns up about one year in three. A cold front comes through, the freezing level falls to 2,200 m overnight, and the morning brings fresh snow on the passes and cloud sitting at 1,600 m for two days together. The high paths are shut to you then, not by anyone's decision but by wet rock and no visibility. We do not promise weather and we will not read you a forecast three months out. What we do is make sure the low days exist before you need them, and that you know where they are on the second morning rather than the fifth.

The fortnight everybody goes

The dates are the point of this one and they are not an apology. In the first two weeks of August the Bavarian, Dutch and Austrian school holidays all overlap, and the Assumption holiday on 15 August shuts Austrian shops and fills every road to a lake. On the ground it reads as follows. Trailhead car parks in the valleys that everybody reaches from the motorway are full by 08:30 and charge 6 to 10 euro for the day. Saturday is changeover day, so the Inn valley motorway crawls from about 06:00 to 14:00, and Tyrol closes certain exits on those mornings to stop drivers rat running through the villages. The summit stations at the head of the cable cars have a queue at the counter by noon.

None of that can be fixed, so the ten nights are laid out around it instead. Two of the three beds sit in valleys served by a road that dead ends, which takes the through traffic out. The moves between beds fall on a Monday and a Thursday. The one appointment with a fixed hour is reserved in April, which is roughly when we would want the dates from you.

Right for some parties, wrong for others, and here is which

This week sits at the end of a short chain of questions: fixed dates rather than a window, mountains rather than a city, a car rather than a train. That is why you are looking at it and not at thirty other things.

It suits two adults who can walk four to six hours with 700 m of ascent, who are not troubled by a cable protected step, who will be at breakfast at seven for ten days running, and who would rather have three beds than eight. It suits people whose leave is fixed and who accept that the fixed fortnight is the busy one.

It does not suit anyone after a rest. There are two three hour drives and one 06:00 start. It does not suit a family with a child under about ten, because the ground at bed two is loose and exposed and there is no way to cut a path short from the middle of it. It does not suit anyone who needs the plan to survive four days of rain intact. And it does not suit anyone who wants one bed and a pool for ten nights, which is a real holiday and one you can arrange in an hour without ringing us.