Zell am See

Zell am See is a small town on a lake with the Kitzsteinhorn glacier twenty kilometres away, and it is one of the few places in Europe where you genuinely can swim and ski on the same summer day. That isn't only marketing — the glacier holds snow for much of the year, and the lake is warm from June.

The town is small and takes an hour: the lakeside promenade, the old church and the jetty where boats leave for a circuit of the lake. What you come for is what surrounds it — the Schmittenhöhe above town, with its cable car and trails, and Kaprun with the glacier twenty minutes away.

This is also the shortest approach to the Grossglockner road, the tolled alpine route that climbs beyond two and a half thousand metres to a view of Austria's highest peak. The road is seasonal, roughly late spring to autumn, and closes with the first serious snow — check the dates before you set off, because they change every year.