Yesterday’s rain cleared away overnight, and it’s a glorious morning. I’m off out for a run.
Today marks the first stage of the easing of lockdown restrictions. Some shops can open, and hairdressers can work again. Val was the first customer. Face masks compulsory, naturally.
After lunch we set out on a walk. Cows are appearing everywhere now.
My turn to cook tonight – paella.
The day began brightly, but rain was forecast and sure enough it arrived just after lunch. We managed a wander around the village in one of the drier interludes. The rain isn’t all bad news – it means more flowers in the meadows and gardens, and the farmers will certainly appreciate it.
We popped into a deserted Co-op for a few bits, and by the time we got home it was raining in earnest. The run I was planning will have to wait until tomorrow.
Every time I go for a run, my watch faithfully records all the details and stores the data away ‘in the cloud’. An app on my phone turns everything into colourful graphs showing how well, or how badly I’m getting on. Every so often the app comes up with a fun fact. Here’s today’s.
100 runs in my current pair of shoes, averaging just over 5km each time. Somehow, after 500 kilometres, the shoes are still fine.
Today started sunny and warm. I called Swiss to enquire about getting back to the U.K. and booked a flight to London Heathrow. Whether it will actually happen remains to be seen. It’s my turn to cook again on Monday so we headed down to Interlaken for some of the harder to find ingredients. Just before we arrived it started raining, and the temperature plummeted. I was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, and soon shivering. The weather’s been so nice it’s easy to forget that we’re still in April and we’ve probably not seen the last of the winter weather just yet.
We had a super dinner of fajitas round at Ali’s last night, and today got off to a predictably slow start.
As I was saying the other day, we take public transport pretty much for granted. Every so often however, we get a reminder of how expensive the network of trains, busses and cable cars really is. It’s the end of winter, so we need to buy summer passes and renew our half-fare railcards.
The lady serving Val was determined that we should get a discount, though her computer disagreed. After a long phone call to HQ it turned out that she was right, so we saved a little money. It’ll still be a four figure item on our next credit card bill though.
Our nursery slope is looking particularly sorry for itself, with a huge trench running from top to bottom. No idea what this is for.
We had a distinctly British dinner tonight; fish fingers, chips and baked beans.
It’s Stechelberg again today. Watch out for the slow cat.
Obligatory check on the tadpoles as we pass the ponds.
I’ve never seen so much water in the Mürrenbach fall. Press play (may take a few seconds to start).
It’s all very chocolate-boxy today.
Ali’s for dinner tonight.
The world’s smallest oil tanker turned up this morning. He spent 15 minutes pumping oil up into our tank, then disappeared.
An hour later he was back with more oil – apparently our tank is much bigger than his tanker.
If you walk north-west from our house, you’ll eventually get to the hamlet of Wengwald. It’s tiny, but very picturesque.
And it has great views.
Wengwald does have its own railway halt, so it’s a good place to find inexpensive accommodation.
We made our way back up to the village, and stopped at the Co-op for ice cream.
If you need firewood here, there are a couple of guys in the village who will deliver logs to your house for a small charge. If you need really big logs however, it’s going to cost a bit more.
This afternoon we hopped on the train to go to Interlaken. It’s true to say that we take the rail service completely for granted, ignoring the notices that warn of any disruption. We just assume that as long as the train turns up, we’ll get to wherever we want to go. Not today. We boarded the Interlaken service at Lauterbrunnen as usual, and didn’t give it a second thought when the train stopped for rather longer than usual at Wilderswil. It turned out that the train terminated there owing to the construction of the new station at the airfield. By the time we realised what was going on, the replacement bus service was long gone. Ah well, back to Wengen it is then.
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