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Rain, rain rain. We don’t really mind though, as the forecast for next week looks very good. The snow up high also dresses the mountains attractively – I got another moonlit shot last night.

Philipp from Central Sport found this photo this morning. It was taken on Friday 17th of January this year, and if you look very closely you can see Val and I watching the air show outside the church.

We love our new home, but that’s not to say it can’t be improved. The first big job is the lighting. At the moment it’s a nightmare of old fashioned incandescent bulbs and halogen spotlights. In the kitchen alone there are 9 of these power-hungry little nasties.

Electricity is relatively cheap here, but of course we shouldn’t be wasteful. I went round the house and counted all the bulbs. Here is the cupboard where the spares live – it’s an absolute horror-show, with not a single energy saving bulb to be found.

There are so many they’ll need to be replaced in stages, so I’ve ordered enough LED bulbs to sort out the kitchen, lounge and our bedroom. The other bedrooms and the bathroom will have to wait a bit.

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It rained heavily last night, and this morning there’s a distinct snow line at about 1900 metres.

We head down the steep track that leads to Lauterbrunnen. Lots of streams to cross.

This house is a mini nursery for plants.

Calves come over to see us as we reach the valley.

Train back up, walk home and straight out for a run.

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We had a nice paella with Ali & Emily last night, followed by a boozy game of yahtzee and an even boozier facetime chat with Paul & Hayley back in the UK.

The forecast today was for rain, rain and more rain, and that’s exactly what we got. It’s not cold though, so we popped up to the village to get rid of last night’s empties and buy a few bits. This afternoon the cloud is just above our house – we can see down, but not up.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.