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Healthy Austria it's a gas

There's one corner of Europe so impossibly clean-living, you have to go there to believe it.

Bad Hofgastein is in Austria, a 90-minute drive from Salzburg in a lovely green valley with churning streams and orderly waterfalls that cascade prettily from the mountains. The air is so sharp, even in summer, that it stings the nose and inhaling it gives you a wonderful energy boost.
The town is ideal for singles, couples and families who want an outdoor holiday fairly close to home in a quiet, unspoilt setting.
As a 32-year-old, arriving was like stepping onto the set of the '80s movie Cocoon, which stars a community of near-death OAPs who suddenly grow perky after discovering a miracle cure for ageing. Few people in sight, barring shop and hotel staff, were under and most were far older.
In winter it is a low-key ski resort. In summer seniors go there for their health, and in this corner of they take "wellness" very seriously indeed.
There are no midnight revellers shouting outside rowdy bars and no blaring music. It is a quiet place where the entire population, visitors and all, appears to go to bed by 10pm, and that takes into account going out for dinner and drinks.
By day, the Gastein valley in Salzburg province is a sweet shop of choice for health junkies of all abilities.
From Dorfgastein take a cable car to Fulseck where there's an invigorating three-hour trek across snow-topped hills that gives you a Zen-like feeling of balance.
The views on a clear day are gorgeous, patchwork hills and wooden chalets, and you honestly do sense the energy flow.
Mountain bikes are free to use for guests at four-star Hotel Osterreichischer Hof in Bad Hofgastein. The valley is largely flat with barely any traffic to negotiate. In two hours, a leafy route along the town's river passes a farm selling milk fresh from the udder, muddy pink pigs, fields of munching cows and banks of wild flowers.
Nothing in life, unless perhaps you were a miner, prepares you for the oddity that is Badgastein's main attraction.
The is a "curative" tunnel that by some quirk of nature contains pockets of apparently safe radon gas and caverns warmed by the subterranean flow of the valley's thermal spring.
A thriving health clinic has grown up around it. After a heart and blood pressure check by a very young doctor in a T-shirt, you brave the tunnel.
Wearing a swimsuit (or in the case of the Austrians, nothing) under a towel robe and slippers issued on arrival, you enter the tunnel in a yellow train driven by a man wearing tight swimming shorts and nothing else.
Passengers include the terminally ill and sprightly-looking pensioners taking a GP-approved course of radon exposure.
The 2.5km ride into the belly of the mountain is hot and oppressive, but sweating buckets for an hour while you lie alone, light-headed, on a wooden bench in a dark and musty cavern while a kindly doctor in teeny trunks periodically checks your pulse is plain weird. Throughout the entire experience talking is banned. The end is a blessed relief.
Your reward for all that discomfort is a sleep-inducing recuperative lie down on starched white sheets in a silent dormitory, with mesmerising views of waterfalls, empty green hills and clean sky.

Read more in our destination guide to Austria.