Saas Valley As our usual Switzerland slot in September was otherwise engaged, we thought we'd sneak in a trip for our anniversary in July. After much consideration we thought we'd revisit the Saas Valley, where we'd spent an enjoyable couple of days in 2010.
Flexiplus Friday - As it was our wedding anniversary, we thought we'd treat ourselves to a Flexiplus ticket on the Eurotunnel. This turned out to be an excellent choice.When we arrived they were just recovering from the serious disruption of a train broken down in the tunnel and had delays of at least two hours. However, our Flexiplus ticket allowed us to board any train we liked. So we popped into the private Flexiplus lounge...
Flexiplus ...and ten minutes later we were sitting at the front of the queue for the next train out. (We would have been the first car on the train, but disabled badge holders are allowed on first, so we were the second car on the train.)
Service Station A French motorway service station at 8pm on a Friday evening! Whenever the French do their travelling, it's apparently not on Friday evenings.
Ibis A couple of hours later and we were at our overnight stop at the Ibis in Chalons-en-Champagne. Had we not had our Eurotunnel Flexiplus ticket we would likely have been boarding a train in Folkestone at about this time - if we were lucky.
Beers There was just time to sample some locally produced beers before bedtime.
Raining Saturday - This was the view from our hotel room window on Saturday morning. Thoroughly miserable. And it didn't improve much as we drove south.
Restoroute de Bavios After a few hours driving we crossed into Switzerland and as usual we stopped at the lovely Restoroute de Bavios service station to buy a vignette, which is required for driving on the Swiss motorways. This is the service station's food court.
Restoroute de Bavios View And this is the view from the service station. At least it had finally stopped raining.
Montreaux View Half an hour later and we were on the motorway that runs along the northern shore of Lake Geneva, where there's a rest area with a lovely view over Montreaux.
Saas Valley About 90 minutes later we finally made it into the Saas Valley.
Ferienart Resort and Spa We parked our car in the big car park on the edge of Saas Fee and walked the final couple of hundred yards to our hotel - the Ferienart Resort and Spa (although they would have sent a little electric buggy to pick us up if we'd asked).Being a posh hotel, they insisted that we have a welcome drink and a tour of the hotel before we were allowed to go to our room. It's a nice touch, but when you've been driving for several hours, a tour of the hotel is not necessarily right at the top of your list of things to do.
Room Still, our room was spacious and comfortable.
Balcony View The view from our balcony was very nice, although the mountains were still largely obscured by cloud.
Village As it was still fairly early, we decided to pop out for a look around the village. Here's Judith on the high street.
Fire Hydrant Most of the fire hydrants were blue and were attached to a post that was maybe six feet tall. This presumably enables them to be located even when they're covered in snow.
Fire Hydrant A slightly non-standard fire hydrant.
Thought For The Day Given that almost everything in the village was written in German, it was strange that this message outside a bar on the high street was written in English.Fondue and rosti for dinner in the excellent Restaurant EssStube. And that was all for Saturday. Time to retire to our hotel for a well earned rest.
Village View Sunday - For my first hike of the week, I'd picked one that didn't have too much ascent and descent, although it was potentially a little further than I would have liked if I chose to do it all.The clouds were low over the village when I left the hotel, but little bits of blue sky were visible, which looked promising.
Car Park On my way out of town I got a nice view of the massive multi-storey car park on the edge of the village where everyone is required to leave their vehicles. Keeping the village car free certainly enhances the peaceful mountain ambience.
Saas Almagell After about 30 minutes I passed the village of Saas Almagell. A trail that I was very keen to try later in the week starts by ascending the hillside in this photo. It looked rather daunting from this vantage point.
Trail Markers For some reason, this trail was marked using these purple plastic discs instead of the more usual painted white and red stripes. This was the only trail I saw all week that adopted this approach.
Dam This was my first clear view of the Mattmark dam, which was my destination. Even from this distance it looked rather imposing.
Dam An hour or so later and I was drawing level with the dam and the scale of it was becoming apparent. This is a photo of the road up the side of the dam. You can just see a few cars parked at the top of the photo. The dam was built in the 1960s and at almost 400 feet tall, is the largest earthen dam in Europe.
On the Dam On the top of the dam it almost felt like I could reach up and touch the clouds.It had been a six mile walk to the dam, so I was at least going to have a six mile walk back to the hotel. It was an extra five miles to walk around the reservoir. It seemed a shame not to walk round having made the effort to walk here.
Dam View From the reservoir trail there was an impressive view of the dam. The water level looked very low, maybe a hundred feet or more below the high water mark. Even from this modest distance the people walking on the dam were too small to see clearly.
Marmot! Walking day one and I'd already had a surprisingly close encounter with this marmot, which ambled onto the trail ahead of me and then posed for photos for a couple of minutes before disappearing down a hole. There were quite a few people on the reservoir trail so this marmot must be relatively comfortable with the presence of people.
End of the Reservoir This was the view from the far end of the reservoir.
Tunnel Walking back down the other side of the reservoir I came to this tunnel with a sign that appeared to say "don't walk in the tunnel, especially if you have children with you"?
Another Tunnel A short while later I reached a pair of tunnels. This time the signs appeared to indicate that I should not walk in the tunnel on the left, but could walk in the one on the right.
Right Tunnel The right tunnel was unlit, but conveniently had holes in one of its walls every hundred feet or so that allowed a useful amount of natural light in.
Dam View Emerging from the tunnel, I was treated to another nice dam view.
On the Dam Back on the dam and the clouds had lifted considerably, giving impressive views of the mountains surrounding the dam and reservoir.
Valley View From the middle of the dam there was a very nice view down the valley. Saas Almagell is just about visible in the bottom of the valley in the far distance.
Reservoir Panorama Looking in the other direction, here I've taken a 180 degree panorama of the entire reservoir.
Valley View A couple of hours later and I was almost back to Saas Fee (as you can tell from the giant car park visible in the photo). Visibility had improved significantly since I'd set off serveral hours earlier.
Beer Fortunately I'd arrived back at the hotel while the complimentary afternoon cakes were still out, so I tucked into those whilst enjoying this lovely cold beer, which felt well earned.
Pool After cake and beer we headed for the hotel's fabulous spa pool. This looks a bit like two photos stuck together, but Judith is in a hot tub on a balcony overlooking the swimming pool.Anniversary dinner in the hotel's restaurant. Note to self - melon is not a viable pizza topping and shouldn't really be on the menu in the first place, just in case some idiot orders it.
Textilfree It doesn't take much effort to work out what "Textilfree Zone" might mean. But I though it was strange/interesting that they'd felt the need to write "Not for Children!" in English?Distance walked today - A slightly ambitious 17.3 milesAscent today - 2,671 feetDescent today - 2,671 feet
Sunny Monday - Having eased myself in yesterday (!), I was trying a more vertically challenging walk today to the cable car station at Hannig to meet Judith for lunch (that's the cable car in the photo).As you can see from the photo, it was already pretty sunny out even as I set off.
Valley View There were lovely views down the valley.
Trees Before long the trail entered the partial shade of the trees, which offered some protection from the blazing sun.
Rocks I don't enjoy it when the trails cross big rock piles like this and you have to navigate from marker to marker (there are four markers visible in this photo if you look carefully). It's not too challenging when the weather is good like this, but when the clouds close in it can be quite challenging finding your way across these rock piles.
Trail View A lovely view of the trail up the side of the valley.
Trail As the trail continued to climb the terrain became rockier. There were also quite a few more clouds around, although none of them actually managed to prevent the sun from shining on me, which was slightly disappointing.
Ibex I passed by a group of Ibex, which appeared to be largely unconcerned by my presence. Presumably because they're fairly big and could stomp me into dust if they felt inclined to do so.
Valley View I was pretty much as high as I was going to go now and I had a fabulous view down into the valley. Saas Grund is on the left, with Saas Almagell visible in the distance on the right.
Mountain View Just stunning.
Selfie With my phone balanced on a rock.
Big Rock Pile Just when I thought I'd reached the top, the trail rose again and crossed this massive rock pile, which was maybe two or three hundred yards across. I passed a couple who were carrying their small dog in their rucksack, presumably because there were some big gaps between the rocks and if their little dog had fallen down one they might very well have never seen it again!
Hannig Shortly after the rock pile I got my first view of the cable car station at Hannig, which is visible in the bottom of this photo.
Hannig The Hannig cable car station with Saas Fee village some 1,700 feet below.
Beer I'm not sure how Judith managed to encourge my phone to take an out of focus photo. However, I am sure that I had really, really earned that beer.
Portrait Mode After a very nice light lunch, Judith decided to join me on the walk back down to the hotel.
View As usual there were magnificent views on the trail on the way down.
Miniature Mode One of the very few photos in this gallery not taken with my phone. This was taken using "miniature mode" on my Panasonic compact camera.
Pool Back at the hotel we went for a well earned dip in the pool.Distance walked today - 9.57 milesAscent today - 3,438 feetDescent today - 3,438 feet
Balcony View Tuesday - Another lovely day, but we were packing up and moving out of our hotel, so there was little opportunity for walking.
Saas Fee View Once we'd checked out of the hotel and packed our stuff in the car, we went for a wander. Our plan was to spend a few hours riding the cable cars in the area using the complimentary travel card we'd been given by the hotel. Unfortunately all of the nearby cable cars were closed on this day, apart from the one to Felskin. So we set off walking to the Felskin cable car. This was the view from the path to the Felskin cable car.
Felskin View And this was the view from the cablecar station at Felskin.
Observation Deck From Felskin there's a funicular railway that goes up to a revolving restaurant high in the mountains (the highest in Europe apparently). However, we didn't really have time for that sort of thing (and we'd been there before), so we made do with admiring the view from the observation deck next to the cable car station.Just to the left of the centre of this photo is the cable car station at Langflue, nestling between two glaciers. However, at this distance it's slightly too small to see.
Water Wheel On the cable car back down I noticed this water wheel behind the cable car station, so I thought I'd best take a photo of it.
Mistral On our way back through the village we stopped into the pretty and beautifully presented Mistral Hotel and Restaurant for a bite to eat.
Rosti Mit Sausage Now that's a hearty lunch.
High Street View Now that there were no clouds, the views of the mountains from the high street were epic.
Woodpecker Judith had managed to sneak up on the biggest woodpecker I had ever seen!
Old Town I'd been meaning to take this photo of the old buildings (store rooms?) all week.
Mattmark As it was still a little early to check in to our new hotel (or so we thought), we took the short drive to the Mattmark dam, where I'd walked to on Sunday.Here's Judith on the dam.
Valley View Here's the view down the valley, with me in the way.
Reservoir View And here's a view of the reservoir with Judith in the way.
Car View This seemed like an excellent opportunity to also get a photo of our transport for the week.
Glacier View Although it looks like the car is just parked in front of some rock, that is (or was) the Allalin Glacier and it's about a mile away. In 1965, during the construction of the dam, two million cubic metres of ice and rock broke off the glacier and crashed through the camp where the construction workers were living, killing eighty eight of them.
Waterfall Using the Slow Shutter app on my phone.
Mattmarkblick A short while later and we'd checked in to our new hotel - the Mattmarkblick in Saas Almagell.Slightly disappointingly, despite the fact that we'd only booked the previous day, they didn't actually have the loft room we had booked. Still, the room we ended up with was nice and comfortable (with a great shower). Time for a beer in the bar before dinner.Note to self - If you're going to stay in a 3* hotel and a 5* hotel consecutively, stay in the 3* hotel first as it's a bit of a shock to the system doing it the other way round.Distance walked today - 0 miles :o(
Saas Almagell View Wednesday - I was attempting my most ambitious walk of the week. As I set off early and the trail was on the East side of the valley, the first mile or so was in shade, which was very nice considering that it had been getting progressively hotter as the week went on.
Sunny However, before long I was walking in the full sun. I was also soon above the tree line so there was very little opportunity for shade.
Shady Fortunately there was the occasional massive rock to rest by and get out of the sun for a few minutes, which was most welcome.
Almagelleralp Before long I'd reached the pretty Almagelleralp hotel and restaurant. It looked like I might have been the first person to pass by on this day.
Valley View The view down the valley was fabulous, but you can see see how little shade there was already and I wasn't even half way to the top yet.Almagelleralp is still visible, just to the right of the middle of the photo.
Selfie Another phone on a rock selfie.
Selfie I couldn't decide whether I liked this one or the previous one best, so I've included them both, which seems reasonable as I don't appear in many of my photos.
Sheep I came across this flock of sheep blocking the trail. I had to shoo them out of the way to get through...
Sheep ...which they seems to interpret as "I'm your shepherd for the day, follow me". So they did. They followed me for nearly fifteen minutes before realising their error and stopping to munch grass again.
Almagellerhutte My first view of my destination, the Almagellerhutte (not to be confused with the earlier Almagelleralp), just visible right in the middle of this photo. As you can see, this is a remarkably remote and desolate place to build a hotel and restaurant.
Almagellerhutte View A panorama approaching the Almagellerhutte.
Almagellerhutte The people you can see in the photo are the proprieters. I appeared to be their first visitor of the day. Three more people turned up within about ten minutes of me arriving, but no-one else arrived during the hour or so that I was there.
Beer Given that it had taken me well over three hours to get here, almost entirely under the shade free glare of the blazing sun, I felt like I'd definitely earned this (and some very nice soup).
Trail I took a different trail back down (presumably the one that the other three had taken up as I'd not seen them on my trail). It was much harder to follow in places. As you can see from this photo, there is no trail as such and I was just navigating from marker to marker, like on the rock piles.
Valley View This trail ran much higher along the side of the valley than the one I'd walked up, so the views down the valley were even better.Almagelleralp is down there somewhere near the middle of the photo.
Trail A miscellaneous view as I approached the tree line.
Bridge! It looked like a lot of people had walked up to Almagelleralp for lunch and were in the process of walking back down to Saas Almagell. So I detoured onto an alternate trail down that no-one else was using because it wasn't actually sign posted to Saas Almagell. However, I shortly began to regret my decision.This "rope" bridge wasn't too bad, although it was rather wobbly.
Trail?! What Trail?! However, this bit of the "trail" was very much testing the limits of my envelope. Call me pedantic, but I'm not sure that I consider a plank of wood nailed to a vertical rock wall to strictly speaking be a "trail".
Another Bridge Then there was another wobbly bridge...
Sign ...followed by this sign. To my mind, three persons was still at least two persons too many for the wobbly bridge, especially if one of them is me.
Steps Then there was a couple of hundred yards of this sort of thing. Steps and ladders and big metal staples hammered into the rock wall. Still, at least there were some bits of "fence" to stop me falling off the "trail" to my death far below!It was a very great relief to get to the end and make my way back to the village on normal trails.
BMWs Back at the hotel, someone had parked a 435i Coupe next to Judith's 435d Gran Coupe. Considering one has two doors and a boot and one has four doors and a hatchback, they were remarkably similar from all angles (apart from the colour obviously).
Bus Judith had an amazing lasagne in a restaurant in Saas Fee on Monday, so we decided to get the bus back there so that I could have one today. Ironically the restaurant was right next to the hotel that we'd checked out of yesterday.
Beer Annoyingly, the restaurant is also closed on Wednesdays. So we went to an alternate restaurant, which did thoroughly fabulous pasta (and other things too probably), so it wasn't too much of a disaster.We decided to walk the couple of miles back to Saas Almagell and I got absolutely soaked in a heavy ten minute shower that was the only rain we saw all week in Siwtzerland (Judith had cunningly thought to bring a waterproof jacket with her).Distance walked today - 10.52 milesAscent today - 3,907 feetDescent today - 3,907 feet
Shady Thursday - Today I was walking to another cable car station to meet Judith for lunch again. As it was very hot out, I got an early start so that I could do the first bit in the shade.
Sunny However, I was soon out in the sunshine again.
Valley View Another great valley view.
Valley View Looking behind me, there were some lovely views of the valley I'd walked up the bottom of yesterday. I think you can just about make out the trail I was on, winding off into the distance.
Valley View Saas Almagell is visible in the valley, with the Mattmark dam and reservoir just visible in the distance.
Miniature Saas Fee Across the vally I had a nice view of Saas Fee, which I've snapped here using miniature mode.
Trail This bit of the trail was quite interesting as it wound through the avalanche defences.
Hand Rail I'm not sure what was so precarious about this section of trail that it necessitated an actual hand rail as it didn't seem to be any more precarious than anywhere else I'd been (with the obvious exception of the mad bit with the bridges and planks).
Kreuzboden After another hour or so I got my first glimpse of the cable car station at Kreuzboden, which is just visible right in the middle of this photo.
Waterfall Another outing for my Slow Shutter app.
Kreuzboden Judith had arrived a little earlier and was sitting on the terrace with a beer.
Beer We had a very nice lunch and a couple of beers before getting the cable car back down to Saas Grund.
Walking From Saas Grund, Judith decided to join me on the three mile trail back to Saas Almagell.
Hot! By this time it was getting really rather warm out. Fortunately the trail was largely tree lined and shady, which made the walk much more pleasant than it might have been.
Mad Bridge As we entered Saas Almagell we got a nice view of one of the mad bridges I'd been on yesterday and coincidentally there were three intrepid hikers crossing it (although I couldn't see that when I took the photo).
Valley View A nice view looking back down the valley as we entered Saas Almagell.
Bus Having been thwarted yesterday, we decided to get the bus to Saas Fee again and have another go at getting lasagne.
Beer (and Lasagne) Yay! They were open and they had lasagne. I maintain that this was quite possibly the best lasagne I had ever tasted.Got the bus back to Saas Almagell, just in case it unexpectedly poured with rain again (which it didn't).Distance walked today - 10.17 milesAscent today - 3,376 feetDescent today - 748 feet (because I got the cable car down with Judith as there is little challenge in walking downhill)
Mountain Sunrise Friday - We were starting our journey home today and had to check out of the hotel by 10am. So I left the hotel shortly after 6am for one last walk. Although actual sunrise had been an hour or so earlier, the sun was barely even catching the tops of the tallest peaks.
Almagelleralp As I was only expecting to be out for a relatively short time, I was travelling very light - no rucksack and no jumper or jacket - so I was able to move a bit quicker than normal and made it all the way to Almagelleralp in an hour.
Valley View Even on the way down the valley was still largely in shade.Back at the hotel we had some breakfast, packed and started the journey home.
Train We had planned to come this way anyway (as it's quite exciting), but the sat nav directed us off the motorway and up into the mountains to Goppenstein to catch the train to Kandersteg.
Train The trains are diesel powered so you might very well die if you tried this in a convertible with the roof down. Impressively, the tunnel is so large that two trains can pass each other rather than need to travel in individual tunnels (like on the Channel Tunnel).
Super Hot! The further North we went, the hotter it got. The hottest temperature I saw on the car's thermometer was 34.5C. Good job I wasn't doing any walking today.
Sofitel After a few hours of happily uneventful, if somewhat scorching driving, we arrived at the excellent Sofitel in Luxembourg, where we would be spending the night.With it being so very hot out we were tempted to just eat in the hotel. But having been sat in the car all day (with the exception of my 4.5 mile sprint into the mountains before breakfast), we thought it might be preferable to get out and stretch our legs for a bit.
The JFK Around twenty minutes walk from the hotel is the (we think) excellent The JFK bar and restaurant, where they do some very nice burgers and things like that (Judith had ribs). I pushed my luck and finished my burger off with their new Trio dessert - Philadelphia brownie, cheesecake and ice cream - which is basically three deserts and pushed me to the limit of bursting. Doh!
Man-In-Canoe? The Luxembourg sign for roadworks is rubbish compared to our man-with-umbrella.
Sightseeing As I was still very full from my Trio dessert, I thought it might be a good idea to go for a bit more of a walk while Judith headed back to the hotel.A few of minutes walk from the hotel was the Philharmonie Luxembourg building, which was looking very impressive in the evening sun.
Philharmonie Luxembourg
Building Next to the Philharmonie Luxembourg building was this standard office block, but it was also reflecting the evening sunlight in a most interesting way.Distance walked today - 4.55 milesAscent today - 1,676 feetDescent today - 1,676 feet
Sofitel Saturday - After a fabulous buffet breakfast, we had a last look at the hotel's impressive atrium before heading for Calais.
Ypres As our Eurotunnel Flexiplus ticket allowed us to get any train we liked all day, there was no rush to get back to Calais so we detoured into Ypres for some lunch. This is a picture of the Cloth Hall in the middle of Ypres.
Ypres Burger A quick internet search indicated that Ypres Burger, just across the road from the Cloth Hall, was very highly rated, so we popped in for a couple of burgers. They had an impressive range of burgers available (maybe two dozen different sorts) and the two we chose were excellent. They also came with a massive box of fries, which, given the size of the burgers themselves, was largely superfluous to requirements. Overall, very impressed. Will definitely go there again.
Racing Shortly after we left Ypres Burger, crowds started to gather along the road outside. So, being easily led, we joined them to see what was going on. After a few minutes a load of motorcycles sped by, followed by loads of cars and vans and loads more motorcycles. Then eventually about a hundred cyclists sped past, followed by a few more motorcycles. Then it was all over and people started to disperse. Not the Tour de France as we had initially suspected, but some Belgian equivalent. Very unexpectedly exciting though.As we were now in the two hour weekly window during which the Kazematten brewery is open, we popped down there and bought a load of Wipers Times beer to supplement the supply I bought a few weeks ago (it might be ages before I pass this way again after all).
Yorkshire Trenches Having returned to the car with our beer, we headed for the Yorkshire Trenches site, just to the North of Ypres. The first time we came here it was closed for renovation. The second time we passed by we didn't have time to pop in (because we didn't have a Eurotunnel Flexiplus ticket!). So this time we were not to be thwarted.
Trench Judith in one of the trenches.
Apparatus Because the trenches were basically full of mud for much of the time, they used to use this sort of structure to try to keep the boards up out of the mud.
Eurotunnel Lounge A couple of hours later and we were back at the Eurotunnel Flexiplus lounge to pick up our free marshmallows and biscuits and have a drink before boarding a train of our choice. It's going to be very challenging not to do this the next time we're on the Eurotunnel. Damn.
Eurotunnel It appears to be a requirement for them to have some space between the Flexiplus travellers and everyone else. On the way out there were six Flexiplus cars - four in our coach and only two in the coach behind, with the rest of that coach left empty. This time there were only four cars, all in our coach, so it appeared that they'd just left the entire coach behind us empty! Weird.
The End Anyway, I didn't want to end with a picture of an empty Eurotunnel coach, so here's a repeat of something a bit more scenic from earlier on.Distance walked this week - 52.11 milesAscent this week - 15,069 feetDescent this week - 12,441 feetTotal distance driven - 1,447 miles @ 49.9mpgWhat a thoroughly awesome week.