Whilst returning from India recently, I was delighted to find my favourite film, Where Eagles Dare, available on the excellent ICE entertainment network on Emirates. Having been a huge fan of the film, and an unashamed Where Eagles Dare tragic, it struck me that I should recount a trip I made to Austria two and a half years ago – and before I started this website – specifically to visit the film locations. Having seen the excellent Where Eagles Dare unofficial website for fans, I hope that my visit may be of interest.

To start, however, I must go back to 1982 and a family holiday to Austria where, having endured a breakdown before we left England’s shores in a comparatively new Zastava, we did make it to Austria and stayed at the delightful lakeside town of St Wolfgang. Our Cosmos rep told us that, should we be interested, the cable car used in Where Eagles Dare, was just down the road in the town of Ebensee. It didn’t take long to persuade my parents that we had to go and, in those days, the car used in the film was still in operation. Incredibly, our first visit up to the Feuerkogel mountain had two people on the roof checking the cables. Richard Burton was still alive then but it was neither him nor Clint Eastwood – nor their doubles...

Three years later, I returned but sadly the old cable cars had been replaced. I went in the late 1990s to Werfen but it was my fourth visit to that area which took in all the film locations. As flights to Salzburg didn’t go on the desired days, I had to go into and out of Innsbruck, a very nice place but it meant making the trip five days to cover the lion’s share of the places.