Kandersteg Judith had fluffed her holiday calculations and left me with five days holiday to take on my own. I could have squandered them on five four day weeks, but I thought it might be constructive to peek out of my comfort zone and drive to Switzerland for a week of unacompanied walking. Although as most of my walking is unacompanied anyway, I was interested to see if it would make a difference being there on my own.
Eurotunnel Friday - Half day holiday, so knocked off at lunchtime and headed for the Channel Tunnel.As is becoming disturbingly often the case these days, they were experiencing some disruption and passengers could expect delays of up to 90 minutes... unless you've turned up with a FlexiPlus ticket. Which I had. Yay!Twenty minutes after arriving, I was driving past a queue of a couple of hundred cars waiting to board a train on my way to being third on the train (as you can see from the pic).
Honda Although not particularly interesting in itself, this picture is noteworthy for two reasons. First, my car is not wet. In the whole 644 mile drive to Kandersteg there was only about an hour when it wasn't actually raining. Second, I had just filled my car with the most expensive fuel I'd ever bought at £1.53 a litre!
Ibis I'd set myself the relatively optimistic target of making it to Troyes on Friday night, which is almost exactly half way between Calais and the Swiss border. If I'd not had a Eurotunnel FlexiPlus ticket, I'd have arrived at my hotel very late indeed. As it was I was in my room at a very civilised 9:30pm.My room did look a little bit like a prison cell, but it was smartly presented, comfortable and perfectly adequate for a short overnight stay. Excellent VFM.
Lunch Saturday - After I nice breakfast in the Ibis for only EUR5, I drove to Switzerland in the rain.I put this picture in to remind me that this was the first McDonalds I'd ever been in with table service. I think it was near Bulle. It'll be interesting to see if/when this innovation makes it to the UK.
Views As I was making good time, rather than drive to Kandersteg on the motorways, I thought I'd head cross country and hopefully take in some scenery. Unfortunately the weather wasn't playing ball. This was the view from a town called Charmey. I got quite wet taking this photo.
View A miscellaneous view. I made the photo black and white as there was virtually no colour in it anyway. I got very wet taking this photo too.
Kandersteg Just after 3pm I arrived at the apartment I'd rented in Kandersteg. It's basically the upper half of the building in the photo.
Lounge and Dining Here's my lounge and dining areas.
Bedroom Here's the main bedroom, with patio doors to the balcony.
Apartment View Lounge area to the left, kitchen to the right, mezzanine level up top (although the ceiling up there was only about three feet high so only really useful for storage or very small people. The main bedroom is visible at the far end and the second bedroom is behind the closed door just to the right of the main bedroom (I forgot to take a photo of that as I never really went in there).
Church First things first, I needed some supplies, so I walked to the supermarket in town. The pleasant ten minute walk (still in the rain) went past this pretty church.
High Street As you can see, the high street is positively kicking at 6pm on a Saturday evening.
Town View A view of one of the rivers running through the town.
Fridge Back at the apartment, the fridge was looking much healthier. And so ended the day. Hopefully the walking would be starting tomorrow.
Leaving Town Sunday - Heading off for my first walk of the week, it was pretty cloudy.
Meadows This trail went up the bottom of one valley, over a pass into the next valley, then back down that valley to town. The trail was easy going, but the visibility was poor and I was navigating between painted markers.
Blue Sky!!! A tiny little bit of blue sky! The first I'd seen for three days! Didn't last long though :-(
Selfie Here I'm looking at where the trail goes - that big rocky outcrop with the snow at the bottom of it. I wasn't banking on snow as low as this in the second week of September.
Mountain Trail After walking up the bottom of the valley for a couple of hours, it was nice to be on a proper moiuntain trail again.
Waterfall With all of the rain, the waterfalls were in full flow. I took a photo of this one using the Slow Shutter app on my phone.
Snow! Before long I was approaching the rocky outcrop and reached the snow. This was only at 7,100 feet (about 2,160m). I'd never seen snow anywhere near this low in September.
Rocky Outcrop Shortly after reaching the snow the trail passed along the bottom of the rocky outcrop, which overhung the trail rather alarmingly.
Wafers Fortunately it seemed to be made of a massive stack of these wafers of rock, a bit like a four hundred foot tall pile of playing cards. Overhanging my head! Not a great place to be hanging around taking photos then!
Pass It was looking like a winter wonderland by the time I reacked the pass. Straight ahead is the other trail I could have taken to get to this point, along the ridge. I'm sooooo glad I didn't go that way.
Trail Despite all of the snow, at least the trail itself was clear, which was a relief. A couple of hundred meters from the pass it was earily quiet. So far I'd been accompanied by the continuous sound of flowing water, but here there was absolutely no sound at all.
Schwarenbach After another half an hour I'd descended out of the snow and got my first view of my half way point destination, the Schwarenbach Hotel, the roof of which is just about visible in the bottom left of this photo if you look carefully.
Mud On the descent to the hotel I was beset by a new obstacle - mud. The trail was very muddy and slippery, but it was some sort of awful mud that clung to thte bottom of my boots. Walking on a slippery trail with an inch of heavy, sticky mud clinging to the bottom of your boots is not a pleasant experience at all. I had to keep stopping to scrape it off, which made progress very slow even though I was travelling downhill.
Schwarenbach Eventually I arrived at the hotel, which was completely deserted, unlike last year when Judith and I walked here from Leukerbad on a lovely sunny day and all of these tables were full. Still, it was open, so I popped in for a lovely bowl of soup and a beer.I'd covered ten miles walking to the hotel and it had taken almost exactly five hours!
Leaving Looking back at the Schwarenbach Hotel as I left after lunch. The trail to Leukerbad is visible in the distance.
Trail Ahead The first part of the trail back to Kandersteg was easy going along the bottom of the valley.
Yikes! I had a shock when I spotted this about fifty meters from the trail as it looks an awful lot like a black bear. Having watched it for about half a minute and satisfied myself that it probably was a shadow, and reminded myself that there aren't any bears in the Swiss Alps (I think), I carried on.
Gorge After an hour or so the wide open valley narrowed considerably.
River The river I'd been following basically disappeared into a big hole in the ground.
View At this point the trail became an insanely switchback affair that descended very rapidly. However, it did offer some excellent views down the valley towards Kandersteg.
Gasterntal Valley At the bottom the trail joined the end of the Gasterntal Valley (where I was hoping to walk later in the week). Looking back at where I had just come from it was hard to believe that there was a hiking train down/up that.
Kandersteg View Another half an hour later and I got my first view of Kandersteg.
Kandersteg It was a bit of a relief to be back in town, almost nine hours after I set off.
Church Passing the church.
Stars Despite the fact that it had been heavily overcast all day, one it got dark all of the clouds disappeared, so I thought I'd be as well to take a few photos.Time for bed.Distance walked today - 19.8 milesAscent today - 4,327 feetDescent today - 4,327 feetOther hikers seen today - 0
Sunny! Monday - The sun was finally, properly out and I was greeted by this lovely view from my balcony. I'd walked rather further than intended yesterday, so was planning to take it relatively easy today, but as this might be the only sunny day I got all week I decided to head for the signature trail up to the view points overlooking Oeschinense.
Kandersteg View As the trail climbed there were excellent views over Kandersteg.
Trail Lower down the trail was pretty muddy, but higher up, where it became rockier, it was much more pleasant to walk on.
Oeschinensee My first view of Oeschinensee. Unfortunately at this time of the day the sun was low over the mountains on the other side of the lake, which made it challenging to get a good photo.
Oeschinensee This was taken from what is probably the premier view point overlooking the lake, although there were very many fine view points along the trail.
Bluemlisalphutte Quite some distance past the lake is the Bluemlisalphutte, which is barely visible here as a dark spec on the horizon, slightly to the right of the centre of the photo.
Bluemlisalphutte Here I've zoomed in a bit more and you can make out the dark spec somewhat more clearly.
Bluemlisalphutte On maximum zoom the dark spec is actually distinguishable as a building. What's also distinguishable is that it's sitting in the middle of a lot of snow.
Behind I had to keep reminding myself to take the occasional look behind as there were some epic views there too.
Morraine Part of the trail went along this glacial morraine, which is basically just an enormous pile of rocks and gravel. Although it doesn't particularly look it in this photo, the slope on the left of the trail is actually rather steep and about three hundred feet high.
Bluemlisalphutte Getting fairly close to the hutte now - about a mile away - and it's clear that it's quite snowy up there.
Bluemlisalphutte Zoomed in a little, the trail up to the hutte through the snow is clearly visible coming in from the bottom left and winding up to the hutte in the to pright. Which is a good thing as it means that it's at least not covered with snow.
End of the Road This is as far as I went, about half a mile from the hutte, as this was the point at which I had the displeasure to be uncomfortably close to a rock fall that cascaded across the trail about thirty yards ahead of me. Given that I was already rather tired after yesterday's exhertions and not particularly looking forward to walking in the snow, I decided this might be a good point to turn back as it was still a three hour walk back to the apartment. Very disappointing as I could almost smell the beer at the hutte.
Trail Still, there were some excellent views on the way down.
Trail This photo is very similar to the previous one, but I couldn't decide which I liked better, so I've included them both.
Oeschinensee Close to the lake the trail split and I could follow the route I'd taken up from Kandersteg or I could descend to a lakeside trail, which I did.
Precarious This bit of the trail looked particularly precarious. I think it's the trees hanging off the edge of the overhang that gives it a particularly this-might-fall-off-at-any-minute sort of look.
Lakeside Finally I reched the level of the lake. A lot of cloud had moved in higher up the valley, obscuring the mountains that tower over 6,000 feet over the lake.
Lunch As I'd failed to make it to the Bluemlisalphutte for lunch and the two smaller huttes that I'd passed on the way down were both closed, I was positively famished by the time I made it to the hotel/restaurant by the lake and felt that 'd very much earned this beer.
Waterfall After lunch I continued my descent to Kandersteg, passing this nice waterfall, which seemed like another excellent Slow Shutter opportunity.
Miniature One of those weird miniature photos of the buildings in Kandersteg.
Home Before long I was back in town and making my way to my apartment.Distance walked today - 13.5 milesAscent today - 4,698 feetDescent today - 4,698 feetOther hikers seen today - 6 (busy day!)
Doldenhornhutte Tuesday - As I'd walked far further than planned on my first two days and was feeling a bit worn out, I thought I deserved an easy day. So I relaxed in my apartment in the morning and had some lunch before heading on the relatively short trail to the Doldenhornhutte, which was clearly visible from my apartment's patio. You can just make it out between the trees on the "horizon" in the middle of the photo.
Doldenhornhutte Zoomed in a bit, the building is a little easier to see.
River I crossed over the river from Oeschinensee on my way out of town.Normal weather service had resumed and it was raining again.
Trail?! At first glance this looks like I've taken a photo of a random bit of rock. But if you look carefully at the left side of the photo you can see a cable attached to the rock leading up towards the grassy area on the right. That's to cling to while you try not to fall to your death as you navigate this bit of "trail".
Bridge Now is it just me, or does this bridge look like it could do to be a bit wider?
Clouds After about an hour the clouds moved in and visibility was reduced dramatically.
Doldenhornhutte So dramatically in fact that I almost walked into the hutte before I noticed it was there.Although it was still raining I thought I'd hang around for a while as the weather was changing constantly and I kept getting tantalising glimpses of magnificent views.
Magnificent View And it was just as well that I did hang around as after about ten minutes, in the space of a few seconds I went from being able to see not very far to being able to see this. I could even see my car from here!
Car See, I told you I could see my car.
Oeschinensee Off to my right a lovely view of Oeschinensee was appearing through the dispersing clouds. And with a rainbow.
Oeschinensee Within a minute the whole valley where I'd been walking yesterday was visible (although the Bluemlisalphutte was still lost in the clouds somewhere in the very far distance).
Miniature I had a great view of Kandersteg, which offered an excellent miniature effect opportunity.
Doldenhornhutte I got a much nicer view of the hutte leaving than I'd had when I arrived half an hour earlier.
Trail I also had a much better view of the scenery I'd been walking through on the way up. Those cliffs ahead are several hundred feet tall.
Trees After a while the trail descended into the trees, where it became rather muddy again.
View This bit of the trail was a bit precarious and I wouldn't have felt at all offended if they'd felt inclined to put a handrail in as the drop off the right side was extremely steep and high.
Muddy The descent to the bottom of the valley took about 45 minutes and it was almost all like this bit of steep, muddy, rocky, slippery trail in the photo.
Flat Bit! Finally I got to the flat bit on the bottom of the valley where it wasn't muddy and slippery and there weren't loads of rocks and tree roots to trip over. Yay!
Mini Golf On the way back to my apartment I passed what must be a serious contender for the title of worlds smallest nine hole mini golf.
420-IMG_9085-HDR Back at the apartment I took this photo of the mountain on the other side of the valley shrouded in cloud, with the sun almost breaking through.Distance walked today - 8.3 milesAscent today - A relaxing 2,651 feetDescent today - A muddy 2,651 feetOther hikers seen today - 2
Cabin Wednesday - This was a random log cabin that I walked past in town, which I thought looked fabulous. From the other side you can see that it's also got a basement level.
Kandersteg View As the weather forecast for tomorrow wasn't very good, I decided to do the walk I'd scheduled for tomorrow today. That was to cross over the into the next valley to the west at the Golitschepass before ascending to the pass at First to cross back over into the Kandersteg valley and descend back to town.There were nice views of Kandersteg as the trail rose out of the town.
Miniature Couldn't resist. Last one.
Trees Initially the trail rose through the now familiar rocky, muddly, slippery wooded terrain...
Meadow ...before entering rocky, muddy, slippery meadows.
Getting High I wasn't far from the Golitschepass when it started raining (maybe five minutes walk), so I switching into full wet gear.
Golitschpass At 7,150 feet, crossing over the Golitschepass, the weather worstened considerably. The rain got heavier and a freezing gale was blowing up the mountainside from the valley. At least it was trying to blow me into the mountain and not off it. Small blessings. But it was still another 1,200 feet up to the second pass that would take me back into the Kandersteg valley.The trail crosses over next to the knobbly bit towards the right of the photo.
People This was also where I saw two of the three people I would see all day. Here they are at the pass, presumably wondering why they'd decided to come up here on this awful day.
Trail The trail guide calls this "a narrow path on a steep hillside - only suitable for good walkers". I had thought I was a good walker, but I was beginning to doubt that. It was a very narrow path and a VERY steep hillside.It was at this point that the clouds closed in so I didn't take any more photos for ages.
Top After what seemed like an incredibly long and stressful time, I arrived at the top and passed back over into the Kandersteg valley. That was, by a significant margin, the most arduous hike I had ever undertaken.Almost immediately the wind died away, although it almost innevitably continued to rain.You can tell from the white background in this photo that visibility still wasn't up to much.
View Eventually the clouds lifted a bit and I could see across the valley. Kandersteg is down there somewhere.
Selfie I took this selfie, just to remind myself that I was still alive. Cold and damp, but still very much alive and in one piece.
Undere Allme After another 90 minutes or so I arrived at the cable car station at Undere Allme. I had intended to walk back down, but it has been very arduous getting this far and I knew the trail down would be more of that rocky, muddy, slippery stuff I'd been encountering all week and at this point I just didn't fancy any more of that.
Undere Allme View So I went to have a look at the view from in front of the cable car station...
Cable Car ...before going to board the cable car, which turned out to be self-service. Probably just as well given that I'd passed three people in six hours. It would be pointless to run it up and down empty all day.
Cable Car View There was a good view from the cable car, although the rain and wet windows made taking photos tricky.The bit of the cable beyond the tower in the distance was the most implausibly vertical cable I've ever seen on a cable car. I can only assume that the car must be physically attached to the cable in some way, rather than just hang from the cable as generally seems to be the case.
Train Walking back to my apartment from the bottom cable car station I saw one of the transporter trains passing by. It would have been nice to have had a go on that this week, but I didn't really have the time.
Sunny So having been rained on almost continuously the the last several hours, about an hour after I got back to my apartment, the skies cleared and the sun came out!!!This is a photo that I took from my balcony of the trail up to the Golitschepass. The trail comes in somewhere in the bottom left of the photo, somehow crosses the rocky bit and then winds up the green bit to the knobbly bit at the top (the Golitschepass) where I took the photo of the other hikers earlier.It's tricky to judge the scale, but it's about 2,500 feet from the bottom of the photo up to the Golitschepass.
Honda As the sun was out and I'd had to drive all the way to Switzerland in the rain, I thought I'd take my car for a top-down run to Spiez on the shore of Thunersee, which was about 20 miles down the valley.Distance walked today - A terrifying 9.6 milesAscent today - 4,774 feetDescent today - 3,107 feetOther hikers seen today - 3
More Rain Thursday - Although it wasn't raining when I left my apartment, I thought I'd best check my Weather Radar app to see if there was any due. I'm in the middle of that photo and the massive red and blue band of torrential rain is moving slowly south east, i.e. towards me. So I switched straight into full wet gear.
Before At this point I will say that I was out walking for five hours and it rained heavily for four of those five hours. The next few photos are before and after shots, taken about three hours apart on my way out of town and on the way back again.Here's the before.
After And here's the after. This is a mere three hours after the previous photo was taken.
Before Looking pretty busy already given all the rain we'd been having all week.
After And three hours later. The large rock in the foreground has been completely submerged.
Gasteretal Valley After a bit over an hour I arrived at the entrance to the Gasteretal Valley.
Gasteretal Valley Shortly after I took this photo the clouds closed in and the rain just got heavier and heavier.
Balmhornhutte Trail I passed the start of the trail to the Balmhornhutte. I had no appetite for tackling another rocky, muddy ,slippery trail today so I satisfied myself with a look at the slightly mystifying sign at the start of the trail. The warning triangle I understand - hiking boots required. However, the top sign seems to indicate that there may be explosives on this trail!!! Good job I'm not going up there then.
Cows It's always nice to get a photo of some alpine cows.
Hut My plan had been to walk up the valley for about three hours. However, it was raining so heavily that I gave up after about an hour and a half. It was a relief to come across this hut in the woods where I could at least stand out of the rain for a few minutes while I had some snacks.Two hours later I was back at my apartment, starting to dry out.
Sunny! Well bugger me. An hour after I got back the sun was out and the sky was clear. Unbelievable.
Balcony Rather than go out again, I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon lounging around on my balcony, drinking beer and admiring the cloud and rain free view.
Golitschepass I could see that now there was snow on the Golitschepass. So as miserable as it has been walking there yesterday, it would have been a lot worse if I'd been walking there today.
Undere Allme The area around Undere Allme, where I'd walked down to to get the cable car yesterday was also looking a bit snowy.
Apartment I went out for a short walk to take a few photos. Here's my apartment in the sunshine,
Path A miscellaneous path in town.
Church Unfortunately by the time I'd made it to the church the sun had already set behind the mountains across the valley.
Church Again I couldn't decide which photo I liked best, so I've included them both.
Bus Shelter Artwork All of the bus shelters in town had interesting artwork on the side. Unfortunately this was the only one I remembered to take a photo of.Distance walked today - A very damp 15.9 milesAscent today - 1,562 feetDescent today - 1,562 feetOther hikers seen today - 1
620-IMG_6807-CLS Friday - Beautiful and sunny today, but I just can't catch a break this week. There's been a hard frost overnight and, with all of the rain yesterday, my car is covered in thick ice. The passenger door is frozen shut, but I just manage to get in to the driver's door. It takes 30 minutes with the engine running and the heater on full to defrost the car.However, I still left Kandersteg at 8am and had a good, trouble free drive out of Switzerland.
Luxembourg By lunchtime I was at the excellent Sofitel in Luxembourg, where Judith had arrived about two hours earlier and was occupying herself in the bar area.
Luxembourg View We has a lovely lunch in the hotel before going for a walk into the centre of Luxembourg City. This was a nice view outside the Museum of Modern Art.
Museum of Modern Art
Exhibit Presumably the wooden crap on the lawn in some sort of exhibit. However, being the Museum of Modern Art it is unclear as to whether the scaffolding is there for maintenance purposes or is also an exhibit itself. Or maybe it's both?I hate modern "art".
Castle Thing A castle thing next to the Museum of Modern Art.
Fort Obergrunewald The path wound through Fort Obergrunewald, which was very strange. Here's Judith looking rather sinister in a tunnel at the fort.
Frame Thing This frame thing was by the path. I assume one is supposed to frame the view in it, like this?
Bridge From the bottom of the valley we had a good view of the bridge into town (Pont Rouge), which is just a couple of hundred yards up the road from our hotel.
Pfaffenthal Lift Judith commented that it was going to be a bit of a pain having to walk up the other side of the valley and how handy it would be if someone had put a lift in when we literally walked into the Pfaffenthal Lift. Awesome.
Lift View There was a nice view from the top of the Pfaffenthal Lift.
Lift View That's where we'd just walked through and from where I'd taken the photo of the Pont Rouge.
Rainbow Just as we got to the middle of the city it lashed down for about twenty minutes, but left this lovely rainbow in its wake.
Bridge Rather than go back down into the valley, we decided to walk back to the hotel over the Pont Rouge. The Pfaffenthal Lift is on the right and the back of the storm that had given us a soaking half an hour ago is on the left.
Beer Back at the lovely Sofitel we had a couple of beers and some snacks in the bar before turning in for the day.
Room View Saturday - Misty first thing, but the sun was trying hard to shine through.
Boot Judith has brought rather more luggage with her than I was expecting, which stretched my boot and my packing ability almost to their limits.
Dinant We had a lovely drive in the sunshine to Dinant, where it started to rain heavily about five minutes after we parked the car.
Cathedral Fortunately we were just across the road from the cathedral when it started to pour down, so we ducked in there for a look.
Judith They'd even made a special "Judith" stained glass window, which was nice.
Window Although it was only a small part of a very much bigger window. Judith's bit is somewhere in the bottom right.
River View Dinant looked to be a pretty nice place and I hope we get the opportunity to come back here for a longer look around. Particularly as it's apparently the home of Leffe beer, one of my favourite Belgian beers. Although I do have a lot of favourites.
Rainbow We has a challenging drive back to Calais, driving through several very heavy downpours, and it was pouring with rain when we reached the Eurotunnel. I took this photo while we were waiting in the passport control queue (the only queue a FlexiPlus ticket can't avoid).FlexiPlus to the rescue again, we drove straight onto a train a couple of minutes after clearing passport control.Back in the UK, we drove through heavy rain all the way home from Folkestone.Total distance driven this week - 1,417 miles @ 35.7 mpg (not bad for a 16-year-old car that only claims to be able to manage a combined 29.9 mpg, particularly considering the weather it's been subjected to along the way).
The End So, it's hard not to acknowledge that it's been a miserable week as far as the weather has been concerned. The worst I've ever experienced by miles in Switzerland. And that's made much of the walking pretty miserable too. But I've still seen some cool stuff and taken some nice photos.Distance walked this week - 67.0 milesAscent this week - 18,012 feetDescent this week - 16,345 feetOther hikers seen all week in 67 miles of hiking - 12