Yesterday’s train journey through the Arlberg Pass to the Salzkammergut in Austria was an uncomfortable reality check for me.

In the five decades since I first crossed by train, modern development has snaked its way deep into the Pass’s breathtakingly steep alpine valleys. Much of the green meadowland with its small clustered villages and dotted farmhouses and barns has gone, replaced by an untidy and dispiriting strip of factories, apartment blocks and urban infrastructure along the narrow valley floors.

It was a relief, then, to travel further east into the Austrian Tyrol which remains largely as I remembered it. There needs to be a new watercolour pigment called Utterly Impossible Green, because the deep, dark emerald green of Tyrol’s meadows and woods very nearly really is utterly impossible.

We’d had a long day’s travel by the time we reached our new destination, Hallstatt, in the Austrian lakes district. By the time we arrived, the weather was closing in, bringing with it that dark mystery of mountain scenery. Adding to the atmosphere, Hallstatt is reached by a little boat, called the Stefanie, which meets the train and transports you across a quiet, swan-gliding lake to the village.

Yes, I know, almost utterly impossible. Hallstatt itself is also almost utterly impossible. Seemingly designed by Disney, this picture-perfect village perches on a precipitous narrow ledge between the mountain and the lake. Further advancing the theme park feel are the hordes of visitors who descend daily on a ratio of 100:1 Asian:Caucasian. Providing traditional Austrian gasthaus accommodation and hospitality is – obviously – a longstanding and thriving industry here!

But Hallstatt is not a tourist industry invention as it might at first appear to be. The village is thought to be Europe’s longest surviving settlement, with a known history dating back more than 4,500 years. It owes its success to an enduringly precious commodity – salt, which has been mined inside the mountain towering over Hallstatt for 7,000 years – the world’s oldest continuously-active salt mine.

Today’s weather has been miserable so we retreated indoors – well, indoors if you consider going deep into an ancient salt mine high inside a mountain to be ‘indoors’. At least it was dry inside!