Switzerland We knew we wanted to go to Switzerland, but we just couldn’t decide where. Somewhere we’d already been before? Somewhere new? In the end we decided to hedge our bets a bit by flying to Zurich, hiring a car and spending the week driving about, checking out places that we might want to return to for a “proper” holiday.
Kuga Saturday - We were up very early for a flight to Zurich to pick up our “Fiesta or similar”. However, the man at the rental desk was determined that we should depart Zurich in something more, er, expensive. So after about 45 minutes of generally dicking about and looking at many cars, we finally set off in this pleasant, white Ford Kuga (I was perfectly happy with a Mazda 2, but he was having none of that).It was nice enough to ride in, being quiet and rattle-free, despite having clocked up an impressive 50,000 hire-car miles, which must be like 150,000 normal-car miles. However, I found the driving position to be rather upright and uncomfortable compared to our normal rides. Still, I suppose you'd get used to that sort of thing after a while.
Sorenberg We left Zurich with the intention of visiting Mount Pilatus, which has impressive views over Lake Luzern. However, the Swiss traffic had a different plan for us. Approaching Luzern the traffic on the motorway ground to a halt. After about 45 minutes we managed to make it about a mile to the next junction. So we left the motorway and almost immediately got stuck in more traffic in Luzern. Clearly whatever had wrecked the motorway was comprehensively wrecking all of the local roads. Over the next hour we moved about 400 yards, at which point, in total frustration, I headed up the first available road out of town. Unfortunately this took us West instead of South.In a “normal” country like England this wouldn’t be a problem, as you’d just drive West for a bit to get away from the stuck traffic, then head South. In Switzerland this sort of behaviour gets you on the wrong side of a mountain, which is a situation that isn’t necessarily easily recoverable.So we continued to head West until we came to a winding mountain road that went through a pass back to the right side of the mountains. Along that road, in Sorenberg, was a cablecar. Being the first one we’d encountered, we went up it. As you can see, the view is okay. Apart from that it was pretty rubbish. Turns out I could have skipped the £20 ticket to the top and just driven to where I took this photo from. Doh!So we headed back to the car and continued on through the pass.
Brienz Rothorn A few miles later we came to another cablecar. This was an altogether different experience, as you can see from this photo. It went very high, giving us an excellent view of the valley we’d just been driving up.
Brienz From the top there was a fabulous view down into the valley that we were supposed to have been driving up in the first place. In the distance you can see the town of Brienz. In the foreground there’s a little steam train that travels between Rothorn, where we are, and the town because there’s no cablecar on that side.Interestingly, the blue at the top of the picture looks a lot like the sky...
Brienz ...however, you can see from this photo with what looks like a boat in the sky, it’s actually a lake - the Brienzer See. Unless I’ve Photoshopped this photo and just pasted a boat in the sky to mess with your mind. But I haven’t done that. It’s really a lake.
Brienzer See This is the view looking to the West from Rothorn. That looks like a pretty scenic place for a spot of lunch.
Brienz Rothorn View This is the view looking to the East. That bench in the foreground also looks like a pretty good place for a spot of lunch. You can just see the end of the Brienzer See in the bottom right of the photo.
Glider At one point this glider circled the view point only a couple of hundred feet away. If I’d been a little quicker with my camera, I’d have got a photo of the pilot looking down at us.
Brienzer See The boat that we saw arriving in Brienz earlier sets off on a new journey.
Panorama The view point offers some stunning panoramas. This photo would be best viewed on three 50” TVs standing side-by-side.
Miniature This is one of those annoyingly weird “miniature” photos of a town that I don’t know the name of on the cablecar side of the mountain.
Adelboden So having entertained ourselves for a while at Brienz-Rothorn, we returned to the car and headed off again. I was slightly disturbed to discover that the sat-nav thought the quickest way to Adelboden from this point was to turn around, retrace our route back out of the valley and drive all the way round the mountain to Adelboden - our destination.As this would have added about 50 miles to the journey, I decided to just press on along the valley. After about 30 minutes I was beginning to doubt/regret my decision. The scenery was fabulous, but much of the road was only one car wide and the bits that were two wide were only just two wide. We were very lucky that there were few cars and no buses/coaches.Anyway, after a relatively stressful hour-or-so in the hire car I’d only had for a few hours, we made it back to sensible roads and had a pleasant and uneventful drive to Adelboden, which you can see in the photo above.Time for a beer and a lovely dinner in the hotel.
Sillerenbuhl Sunday - Lovely weather again today, so we decided to head straight up the cablecar to Sillerenbuhl (1,974m), which you can just about make out on the hill on the right in this photo. The peak on the left is Albristhorn (2,762m).From Sillerenbuhl we decided to undertake the short walk (about 2 miles/3km) to Hahnenmoos, which at 1,957m was slightly lower than where we were setting off from, which pleased Judith greatly. Judith followed the sensible and relatively flat trail that everyone else was on. I decided to make it a bit more interesting/challenging by taking a side trail up to the ridge at Lavey (2,200m) before heading back down to Hahnenmoos.
Cows I passed these cows along the way, which provided some foreground interest in what would have otherwise been a relatively flat and plain panorama.
Cablecars Having met back up with Judith at Hahnenmoos, we got the cablecar down to Geils (1,707m). As it was still early we decided to walk the 4 miles (6km) back to town. Part of the trail ran along the route of the cablecars that would have whisked us back to town in less than 15 minutes.
More Cablecars Back in Adelboden, we decided that we had just enough time left (before the cablecars stopped for the day) to pop up to TschentenAlp for a look at the view. For some reason the TschentenAlp cablecars run in this tightly packed three-car formation as opposed to the more conventional car-every-50-yards formation.
Tschenten Alp And this was the view from the top. Lovely.
Walking Although the cablecar was still running, we decided to walk the 3 miles (5km) back down to Adelboden anyway as a) it was all downhill, and b) the signs indicated that it would only take an hour-or-so.
Clouds There was a brief, heavy downpour just as we set off, which nearly caused us to retreat to the cablecar (a fellow walking ahead of us did just that). However, being made of sterner stuff (!), we pressed on. About 10 minutes in we started to hear rumbles of thunder in the distance and after about half-an-hour, with the thunder becoming increasingly rumbly, we glanced behind us to see these menacing looking clouds closing in from the West.About 15 minutes from the hotel it started to absolutely heave it down. Judith was well prepared with her monsoon rain cape, but I’d inconveniently not packed mine. My waterproof jacket kept my top-half dry, but my legs got well soaked.I think the moral of this story is to always be prepared to be waterproof from head to toe, however nice the weather looks when you set off. Unless you’re somewhere like Dubai, when you’ll probably get away with it.Back at the hotel I changed into dry stuff before beer and dinner.
Kandersteg Monday - It’s time to leave Adelboden and head for Bettmeralp. It’s a long drive round the mountains into the next valley, where Bettmeralp is located. However, the Swiss have thoughtfully dug a tunnel through the mountain, reducing the journey time and distance considerably.I hopped out of the car to take this photo looking back down the valley, but when I saw the big train of cars coming up the hill (some of which you can just see in the bottom of this photo), I promptly hopped back in and headed for the train.
Train The train was scheduled to depart at 10:20. Since I was paying at the ticket barrier at 10:20, I fully expected to have to miss that one and be at the head of the queue for the next one. However, we were directed straight to the train, which was handy.
Train This photo shows just how close we were to missing the train, as we were the last car on and the train left about 30 seconds after we drove on.
Valley Fifteen minutes later and we were driving on the other side of the mountain. This was taken on the drive down from the train station, which is situated high on the side of the valley.
Saas Valley (Saastal) As it’s only about 40 miles to Bettmeralp we decide to do a bit of sightseeing along the way and make a slight detour up the Saas Valley (Saastal) to Saas Grund. We visited Saas Grund a couple of years ago when we were staying in nearby Saas Fee, but there was a lot of low cloud on that day and we didn’t get to see much, so this lovely, clear day seemed like an excellent time to go back.Zermatt is in the next valley over and we would have dearly loved to pop in there for some lunch, what with it being one of our favourite holiday destinations. However, the purpose of this holiday was to see new places, not to revisit places we already know well.
Saas Grund At Saas Grund (1,559m) we get the cablecar up to Kreuzboden (2,397m). This is the view of Saas Grund from the cablecar.
Kreuzboden We arrive in Kreuzboden just in time for them to turn the cablecars off for lunch, so there’s going to be no opportunity to continue our journey to the top station for an hour-or-so. Still the views from here are quite splendid, so it doesn’t seem to be much of an effort to have to hang around for a while.
Chilling Judith decides to spend her time chilling out and reading a book.
View I decide to go for a bit of a wander and take some photos.Right in the middle of this photo, in the far distance, you can just make out Saas Fee. Saas Fee is a really nice place to go and visit/stay. You can quote me on that.
Walking I decide to head for a view point that I can see in the distance.
View Point The view point, as its name suggests, offers a good view of the area. The arrow on the left is pointing to the top station, Hohsaas, were we’ll be heading once the cablecars start up again. The arrow on the right shows were Judith is sitting on the hammock reading her book. The cablecar station we’re “stuck” at is visible between the two.
Hohsaas After a while the cablecars start up again and we head up to Hohsaas (3,200m). This is, by a few hundred meters, the highest point we will visit during our travels this week.
Triftgletscher The main reason people come up here is to see the Triftgletscher, which is the white mass in the middle of this photo. You’ll have to take my word for it that it looks much more impressive when you’re actually standing there.They’ve conveniently built the hotel/restaurant you can see in the foreground, where we had a couple of very nice rostis.
Talstation Betten Having left the Saastal, we completed our drive to the car park at the Talstation Betten (820m), where we switch to a cablecar for the ride up to Bettmeralp (1,924m).
Bettmeralp View This is the view looking South from Bettmeralp. Our car is down in that valley somewhere.
Beer Time Back at the hotel, it’s time for a beer and some dinner. Yay!
Church Although this photo makes the church look a bit like it’s in the middle of nowhere, it was actually just across the road from our hotel in the middle of Bettmeralp.
Bettmerhorn Tuesday - Another nice day. Today Judith is going to get the cablecar up to the Bettmeralp Bergstation, which is just in front of peak that you can see in the distance in the middle of the photo. Being energetic and keen, I’m going to walk the 3 miles (5km) or so from Bettmeralp (1,924m) to the Bettmeralp Bergstation (2,650m).
Aletsch Glacier After about an hour of steady climbing, I make it up to the ridge and get my first view of the stunning Aletsch glacier. I’ve taken photos of it because, well, you have to. But they just don’t do it justice because the scale of the thing is so mind-bending. The ice is about three quarters of a mile wide and the mountains that you can see in the distance are six or seven miles away.This is definitely one of the most amazing sights I have ever had the pleasure to experience in my entire life. If you ever find yourself in the region of Bettmeralp, I very strongly urge you to take a couple of hours out of your day to get the cablecar up to the Bettmeralp Bergstation and see this. You won’t regret it. Unless the weather is rubbish, but that’ll be obvious from the bottom anyway.I slowly make my way along the ridge towards the Bettmeralp Bergstation, stopping frequently to look at the view and take photos that completely fail to capture the magnificence of the glacier.
Bettmeralp Bergstation A while later I start to close in on the Bettmeralp Bergstation, which can now be seen slightly to the right of the centre of this photo.
Aletsch Glacier Near the Bergstation I meet up with Judith, who is also marveling at the view.
Moosfluh View As it’s still early, I decide to stretch my legs a bit more and walk to the Moosfluh cablecar station, which you can just about make out about 2 miles (3km) away at the top of the hill in the middle of the photo. The cablecar station is about 300m below where I’m standing, but, as you can see, there’s a bit of a dip in the middle, so the second half of the walk is a bit of an uphill slog.
Cow There are a few cows grazing along the ridge. I’ve no idea why this one is looking at me when there’s that amazing view behind it.
Last Glacier View Having made it to Moosfluh easily enough, I decide to carry on along the ridge for a couple more miles so that I can descend directly into Riederalp, where Judith has walked to having got the cablecar down to Bettmeralp. This is my last view of the glacier before I descend from the ridge.
Looking South This is the view to the South as I descend from the ridge.
Riederalp Finally I approach Riederalp (1,925m), where I meet up with Judith. We walk the 2 miles (3.5km) back to Bettmeralp for a well earned dinner in the hotel.
Bettmeralp As this is our last evening in Bettmeralp, we decide to go for a walk after dinner. As you can see, the high street is positively rocking at 8pm on a Tuesday evening.
Flowers Tomorrow’s weather forecast is not looking promising, so some of the hotels and chalets have put covers, or in this case umbrellas, over their flower boxes to protect the flowers. Either they take their horticulture very seriously around here, or they’re expecting a very major downpour later. I hope it’s the former.
Church View Wednesday - The view of the church is somewhat obscured this morning and it’s raining fairly heavily. We walk the couple of hundred meters to the cablecar station and travel down to recover our car for the drive to Arosa.
Furka Train We had originally intended to drive to Arosa via Davos, just for a look, as part of our fact-finding mission. However, although Davos is geographically only a few miles from Arosa, there’s a mountain between the two and the detour around it would add about 50 miles to our drive. In general, I would not consider 50 miles to be a particularly long way. However, winding over the mountain passes in the dreadful weather, it rapidly became apparent that we wouldn’t have time for this sort of detour. So we just had to make do with whatever we could find on the more direct route.The first interesting thing we came across was this steam train. You can just about make out that it was completely lashing down when I took this. As the train looked like it was getting ready to go somewhere, I hung around under a tree to watch it leave.
Furkapass And leave it did. Here you can see its smoke in the distance as it heads off up the Furkapass. My enthusiasm to watch the train leave was to come back and bite me on the arse shortly afterwards because it transpired that the train was full of train enthusiasts that wanted to take photos of the train crossing a level crossing up in the pass. So they stopped the traffic so they didn’t spoil their photos. Cheeky monkeys. We were held up for about 10 minutes, until a lorry behind us got fed up waiting and just drove though.
Brrr The higher we drove up the pass, the colder it got. The rain turned to sleety snow and the visibility deteriorated to about 50 meters. It was at this point that our Kuga decided to pop up a message on its screen saying “Engine Malfunction”. Yikes! Everything seemed to be functioning correctly, but we didn’t want to stop just in case it wouldn’t start again. So we kept going for about another 30 minutes until we came to a small town, at which point we pulled over.The first thing we thought to try was the old IT favourite of turning it off and on again. So we turned it off, left it for a minute and turned it back on again. No warning message. Woo hoo! We didn’t see that warning message, or any other messages, for the rest of the week. It never ceases to amaze me quite how often that turn-it-off-and-on-again thing works.
Oberalpass This is our newly “repaired” Kuga at the top of the Oberalppass. The view was slightly better in the opposite direction, but the sleet was driving into my face, and the camera, so I had to point in this direction to be able to take the photo at all.
Peist View Eventually we made it to the valley that Arosa sits at the end of. This is a miscellaneous view looking towards the town of Peist.
Langwies Further up the valley we get a nice view of the railway bridge at Langwies.
Balcony View Eventually we arrive at our hotel in Arosa, where it’s cold and snowing lightly. This is the view from our balcony. Davos, which we were hoping to visit today, is a few miles away, just on the other side of those mountains.
Balcony View Thursday - Visibility is even worse than yesterday and it’s cold, but at least it’s not snowing. As the hotel has given us a complimentary travel card for use on the local cablecars, trains and buses, we decide to get the cablecar up to the Weisshorn, even though there wasn’t likely to be much of a view today.
Weisshorn Cablecar The first stage of the journey is to get this cablecar from Arosa (1,739m) up to the Weisshorn Mittelstation (2,010m). As you can see from this photo, although Arosa itself is largely free of snow, one doesn’t have to go much above the level of the town to find it laying.
Weisshorn Cablecar At the Weisshorn Mittelstation (2,010m) we switch to this other cablecar, which will take us up to Weisshorn (2,653m). As you can see, it’s pretty snowy at the Weisshorn Mittelstation.
Weisshorn At Weisshorn it was rather snowy indeed. We would clearly be doing no walking up here today.
Restaurant Inside their nice, new restaurant, which was apparently only finished just over a month ago, there should be a 360 degree view of the surrounding mountains. Today we can just see the snow covering the windows. Oh well. We have some very nice cake before heading back to town.
Langwies As we can’t go higher than Arosa (1,739m) to walk, we decide to go lower and get the train back down the valley to Langwies (1,377m). From there we can walk along a 4 mile (6km) trail that follows the river and railway line back to Arosa.
River Crossing For a while here I thought I was a shoe in to get £250 from Harry Hill, but Judith kept her footing and completed the crossing unscathed.
Skating Back in town, we discovered that our free travel card also entitled us to free entry to the ice rink (although it didn’t entitle us to free skate hire). Here’s Judith looking so comfortable on her skates, she could have been born on the ice.
Skating Slightly surprisingly, we’re the only people here. Not that I was complaining. It was fabulous having a whole, freshly Zamboni-ed ice rink entirely to myself.
Skating As I said, I was feeling pretty pleased.Having spent a fabulous hour skating about, we felt like we’d worked up enough of an appetite to return to our hotel for dinner.
Weisshorn Friday - Clear. Blue. Sky. Yay! It’s still a bit chilly, but yesterday’s snow is largely gone. So we’re off back to Weisshorn for a look at the view. That’s Weisshorn at the top of this photo.
Restaurant And this is what the restaurant looks like from the outside in the sunshine. It’s surprisingly big.
Helicopter This helicopter was ferrying building supplies from the Mittelstation to the top, where builders were constructing a wall or some such.
Ice The weather was creating impressive ice crystals on the cables supporting this sign post.
Weisshorn View You can see a long way from up here. It’s really strange that all of the mountains seem to be approximately the same height. I’m sure there’s probably some sound scientific reason for that.
Weisshorn View That’s Arosa down there. As you can see, the snow is retreating rapidly from the bottom of the valley in the heat of the sunshine.
Walking Having got the cablecar back down to the Weisshorn Mittelstation (2,010m), we start the short 1.5 mile (2.5km) walk to the other cablecar station at Innerarosa (1,832m). Weisshorn is still just visible in the distance at the top of this photo.
Innerarosa This is the view approaching Innerarosa. It’s turning out to be a lovely day.
Innerarosa The view of Innerarosa from the cablecar to the Hornlihutte.
Hornlihutte View And this is the view of Innerarosa and the surrounding area from the Hornlihutte (2,511m).
Hornlihutte The Hornlihutte itself is a smart new hotel and restaurant. I should imagine that it would be very nice to spend a night or two up here. The view of the stars from up here should be fabulous with a sky as clear as this.
Beer Mmmm. Beer. Taken with my ultra-wide angle lens.We have a spot of lunch before heading off on the 3 mile (5km) walk back to the Weisshorn Mittelstation.
Marmot Along the way we see quite a few marmots, but this was the only one we got close enough to photograph.
Innerarosa We pass by Innerarosa again.
Walking Although it’s getting fairly late in the afternoon, I don’t feel like I’ve really stretched my legs enough yet today. So whilst Judith gets the cablecar back to Arosa, I decide to yomp off on a 5 mile (8km) alternate route back to town.This is a view of Arosa from the trail. You can see that the snow is now all but gone after a day of glorious sunshine. If we’d been here for one more day I reckon I’d have been able to have a go at the ridge trail from Weisshorn to the Hornlihutte. Doh!
View A miscellaneous view on the way back to Arosa.
Stars I popped out onto the balcony for a look at the view before going to bed and discovered this breathtaking view of the night sky. So I went up onto the roof of the hotel to take a few photos. I don’t think I’ve ever had such an excellent view of the Milky Way. Despite Arosa being a fairly large town, they clearly don’t suffer much from light pollution round here.I think the slight glow in the sky just above the mountains is the light from Davos.
Peist View Saturday - Another lovely day. Today we’re heading back to Zurich for our flight home.
Bad Ragaz As the flight isn’t until late in the afternoon, we’ve got some time for a little sightseeing along the way. So we pop into Bad Ragaz, which you can see in the centre of this photo. It looks very posh and there are lots of very affluent looking older people strolling around.A couple of miles out of town is the Pizol cablecar. As we like cablecars, we decide to go up for a look.
Pizol Cablecar This cablecar travels from Pizol (510m) to Pardiel (1,633m). From Pardiel there’s a chairlift up to Laufboden (2,226m), which has a view of a glacier. Unfortunately we’ve timed our arrival over lunch (again) when the chairlift to Laufboden is closed. We don’t really have the time to hang around waiting for it to open again, so we just have a bite to eat at Pardiel instead.
Pardiel View It’s a nice view to enjoy with your lunch.After lunch we head for the airport.
Zurich Airport An hour later we’re at the airport. A word of warning here for hire car drivers. If you follow the signs to Zurich Airport, the last petrol station you pass will be about 25 miles from the airport. When I passed that one, there was a sign saying there was another one in 11km, so I thought I’d wait for that. But we switched motorways before reaching it and didn’t pass another one. So we had to return our hire car with a quarter-full tank and got charged/robbed for them filling it up for us.Anyway, despite that minor mishap at the end, we’ve had a fabulous week. Our primary goal for the week (apart from to have a brilliant holiday) was to try to find some new locations to visit and we’ve most definitely achieved that. We’d very much like to return to Adelboden (for a third time), the Saastal, Bettmeralp and Arosa. I’m looking forward to coming back to Switzerland already.