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Three years ago a local lad called Ryan Regez caught a plane to China. He was off to the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing. He returned to Wengen a month later with the gold medal, and enjoyed a hero’s welcome.

Last month he packed his bags again and headed for St Moritz, a few hours away by train. The Freestyle Skiing World Championships were taking place there. This time Ryan returned to Wengen with not one, but two gold medals. His ‘official’ homecoming took place this afternoon, and the whole village congregated at the Figeller bar at the bottom of the nursery slope.

The kids from Wengen ski club formed a guard of honour.

We knew there’d be some sort of grand entrance, but nobody knew exactly what was planned. We got a clue when the cable car stopped immediately above the bar.

The doors opened, and out jumped Ryan attached to a winch cable.

The cable cars are quite high up, so it took a while to winch him down.

Eventually he neared the ground.

A quick run through the guard of honour.

And here he is.

Lots of interviews, lots of people to thank.

A super afternoon, bravo Ryan.

Wengen is pretty much closing down now, and the summer season will start at the beginning of May. We’re off to the UK for a few weeks tomorrow.

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It’s another warm, sunny day in the Bernese Oberland, and for most of the bars, restaurants and hotels here in Wengen it’s the last day of the winter season. Wengen still has a few visitors though, and this morning the mini-golf was busy.

Sunny weather means lots of free electricity for us, so we did all our laundry this afternoon. Later on we’ll be calling in at Rocks for a beer or two, before heading to the Indian restaurant for dinner.

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The weather keeps on getting warmer, so we grab some sandwiches and head for the lake. The bus drops us off at Bönigen, a small village on the western shore of lake Brienz.

The water level in the lake is about half a metre lower than it should be owing to an acute lack of rainfall so far this year. The steamers, which usually use Interlaken as their point of embarkation, instead have to pick up their passengers here at Bönigen.

It’s still very early in the ‘summer’ season, so there’s very little traffic on the lake, despite the beautiful weather.

We had a nice walk back to the railway station along the shoreline.

Back in Wengen our roof has predictably had its best day ever, producing an astonishing 119 kWh of electricity. As we were out for most of the day we only managed to use about 10% of this, and the rest has been sold back to the grid.

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… a day makes. Yesterday there was a big storm up at Scheidegg which closed the ski lifts. It was cold and windy in the village.

24 hours later…

Today we have perfect spring weather. On days like this the solar roof produces way more electricity than we can use – about 110kWh. More than 80% of today’s output will be sold back to the grid.

There was a good crowd at the Braunbaer yesterday evening for Colin & Steve’s last gig of the season.

This weekend the Braunbaer, along with all the other hotels and bars in the village will close for the rest of the month.

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I’m running out of beer, so I need to pay a visit to Lidl down in the valley. To get there I catch the bus to a place called Matten. For some reason Matten has lots of water fountains, and the tourist office has created a ‘fountain trail’ so that you can see them all.

Spring is well underway down here. The cherry blossom at my bus stop is spectacular.

Val went skiing with Wil.

It was very quiet up at Scheidegg – no queues at all.

With so few people around, you can ski quite fast.

At this time of year the snow quickly becomes too soft for skiing, so we were both home in time for lunch.

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After a wet and cold day yesterday, this morning was a lot more cheerful. We had a walk around the village after lunch. There was a running race this morning called the Lauberhorn Run. The course goes from the bottom of the World Cup downhill run all the way to the top of the Lauberhorn. Fancy dress is encouraged, and these girls dressed as cable cars won first prize.

The forest has a carpet of wild flowers.

The ski run back to the village is getting a bit threadbare where it crosses the road.

Val’s colleague Ryan had to drag his client up the last bit of the slope.

Uptown Lights will have their last gig of the season later on at the Braunbaer.

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Not much to report today, we spent most of it cleaning and polishing as we have a ‘royal visit’ from our landlady tomorrow. Val had a walk into the village to meet Ali this afternoon, and the spring flowers have begun to pop up alongside the path to the station.

We’ve had a lot of nights out lately, so this evening it was nice to have a night in watching an Agatha Christie murder mystery on the BBC.