This time, we didn't want the same-old Mediterranean beach holiday. We wanted something active, healthy, uplifting. Something like the opening scene of The Sound of Music: Maria dancing in high green fields, amid bright skies and countryside that makes you sing.
I know! But my eight-year-old, Nancy, had always loved that film, and so we threw ourselves into a summer holiday exploring three areas of the Tyrol, in the west of the Austria, with new boots and shorts all round, and plenty of blister plasters.
The Wild Kaiser mountains near the German border, the Seefeld plateau near Innsbruck, and the Ötztal valley, towards the Italian border are all beautiful and dramatic, with quite distinct flavours. We would make our base at hotels that put wellness at the heart of what they offer – from delicious, healthy food in the restaurants to spas where (this being Austria) men and women mingle unselfconsciously in the nude.
The Bio-Hotel Stanglwirt, at the foot of the dramatic Wilder Kaiser mountain, is one of Austria's oldest and most famous. Here, tradition is everything – right down to the dirndls worn by all female staff. But there was a contemporary emphasis on natural goodness, from the almost medicinal herbal teas to the building itself, almost entirely made of wood, right down to light switches, and telephone handsets. Parts of the roof are natural turf and meadowflowers, with grazing animals. Heading out of the hotel, we spotted frogs, dragonflies, rabbits, cows and butterflies all within the first few minutes.
In mountain inns we ate delicious snacks of sausage and cheese on extraordinary rye breads, plus thick soups and giant glasses of cold beer. Almost everything we ate in the Tyrol was organic. Organic farming makes up 30% of the region's agriculture. My husband, who uses a scythe on our allotment in London, is used to people thinking him a bit odd. He was beside himself with excitement to see how many people in Austria use scythes to cut grass.
Walking the Wilder Kaiser's steep pine-covered slopes needs stamina, but care is taken to make even difficult walks child-friendly. A challenging three-hour Moor and More walk was punctuated by little treats every 20 minutes or so: a zip wire, some wooden swings, and a super-high treehouse that tested Nancy's nerves.
Things were slightly different at the Seefeld high plateau, just north of Innsbruck, one of Austria's most popular summer resorts. Here many of the walks didn't depend on climbing up mountains, which delighted Nancy. But the walking in Seefeld was idyllic: every so often forests would open into clearings filled with herds of contented cattle gently clanging their cowbells. Some of them were placid enough for Nancy to stroke.
So it was all the more surprising when, on one walk, we stepped into a clearing and found Wildmoosalm, a crowded pub festooned with football memorabilia, where a vast crowd jostled for pitchers of beer.
Less raucous but equally memorable was an early breakfast halfway up a mountain overlooking the hip ski resort of Sölden, in the Ötztal. At 8am it was already gloriously warm and sunny at Gampe Thaya, a family-run inn. Empty when we arrived, it looked breathtakingly picturesque – with flowers everywhere, the little tables laid beautifully, all overlooking the dramatic peaks. We ate homemade yoghurt and muesli, freshly baked bread with red berry jam, and cheese made with raw milk from the Tyrolean grey cattle that grazed nearby.
The lovely owner, whose husband has lived there all his life, invited us inside to see the cowbells they have won over the years – bells that are awarded in September if every head of cattle returns safely from summer pastures in the mountains.
We stayed as long as we could, but it was getting hot – this was the middle of August with temperatures around 30C – and we had a long walk ahead of us, through flowery meadows and along steep paths to the cable car. A spanking new, eight-person gondola took us to the jagged 3,050m peaks of Gaislachkogl, at this time of year just barely covered with ice.
In winter, Sölden is a buzzing ski resort, but in summer it is sleepy and half empty. At one of the newest design hotels, the Bergland, we spent many happy hours around the pool and in the dramatic outdoor Jacuzzi overlooking the mountains. Steamy summer storms arrived each night at dusk, as if by clockwork.
Those with children older than Nancy could take advantage of a range of adrenaline activities – mountain biking, canoeing, rafting, rock climbing and Area 47, an extreme sports park with the best water slide in Austria. The child-free might have enjoyed the hi-tech spa and thermal baths at Lagenfeld's Aqua Dome (aqua-dome.at/en).
But we took ourselves to Ötzi Dorf, a mocked-up stone age village built after the discovery, in 1991, of the preserved body of a prehistoric man, Otzi, in the icy heights of the nearby mountains. Looking at Otzi's leathery old face, we realised that the joys of the walks we had taken would once have been his joys, too.
Gasthof Krone, in the pretty Ötztal town of Umhausen, is a traditional 17th-century inn – its inside all wood, its outside ornately painted, where we ate wiener schnitzel with sauerkraut and erdapfeln ("earth apples", or potatoes: we were surprised at how different Austrian German is).
A short drive away is the Piburger See, a dramatic lake created during the last ice age after water gushed into a crater created by an enormous rock slide. We followed a hiking path around the lake to the cafe where we hired a rowing boat and swam.
And the sound of music? We heard that – the real Austrian thing, not Rodgers and Hammerstein – in many places. But perhaps the most memorable was at the Stanglwirt. The family who own the hotel have been singing in competitions for generations and host a gathering of singers every year. Each evening, exhausted after our long walks, but revived after a spell in the pool, we were entertained by our own version of the Von Trapp family: as we ate beneath the petunias and busy lizzies, three female singers dressed in beautiful dirndls treated us to Austrian folk songs, to their own accompaniment on zithers. And, behind them, the sun set slowly over the Wilder Kaiser mountains.
• The trip was provided by the Tyrol tourism office (tyrol.com). Hotel Stanglwirt (+43 5358 2000, stanglwirt.com) has doubles from €104pp B&B, or €149pp half-board, including a substantial midday snack. The Bergland (+43 5254 2240, bergland-soelden.at) has half-board doubles from €149pp. Easyjet (easyjet.com) flies to Innsbruck from Bristol, Gatwick and Liverpool from about £180 return in summer
