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It’s time for a day out, so we’re off to Grindelwald. With the limited train timetable at the moment it takes ages to get there, but it’s a lovely day, so who cares? It’s a pretty village once you get away from the commercial centre.

Just as Wengen is dominated by the Jungfrau, Grindelwald lives in the shadow of the Eiger.

Grindelwald is known as the glacier village. It has 2 glaciers that used to come almost to the village. Nowadays they’ve receded back up the mountains. This is the lower glacier.

This one used to come so close to the village that people dug holes in it to store their milk. A nice day out.

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We’re off to see how the tadpoles are doing at Stechelberg. They haven’t changed much since last week, but the wild flowers in the nature reserve are beautiful.

It’s a lovely day – perhaps a little too warm for my run back to Lauterbrunnen. Note – Team GB top for VE day.

Seen along the path.

A good run, but I was glad to get to the Horner pub at the end of the path.

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Emily cooked last night, a delicious meal of chicken breasts wrapped in bacon and stuffed with mozzarella, garlic potato wedges and roast asparagus.

Yum!

We awoke this morning to a glorious day, so we had an early lunch and headed down to Wilderswil. From here we can walk across the fields towards Bönigen.

The lake is stunning as always, but utterly deserted.

From Bönigen it’s an easy walk back to Interlaken for the train home.

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It’s cloudy and chilly, but it’s Wednesday, so I don my hi-viz gear and we head down to Lauterbrunnen. Here we go.

Animals aplenty down here now.

The Horner, along with every other pub in Switzerland, has been closed since March. Now the weather’s warming up a bit the enterprising folk who run the place have started selling takeaway beer, snacks and ice creams. Very tempting at the end of my run.

I somehow managed to resist. Emily is cooking tonight, so there’ll be no shortage of beer later.

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The Swiss love cash. Did you know that 70% of all transactions here are made in cash? We do see people using plastic from time to time, and of course there’s plenty of online shopping that requires people to use electronic payments, but, by and large, people prefer cash. The biggest banknote available is 1000 francs (£850, US$1000), and there are 50 million of these in circulation in Switzerland (population just 8 million) today.

Indeed, many businesses do not even accept credit cards. Try to use one in Rocks or the Tanne or the Crystal bar, and you’ll be sent scurrying off to the cashpoint. The popular Jungfrau hotel at Wengernalp costs hundreds of francs a night, and they don’t accept cards. You can’t even use them in the post office – it has to be cash. And that’s before we get to popular payment apps like Apple and Google Pay, which are almost unheard of here. I used Google Pay in Central Sport once, just to see whether it would work. It did, but I bet it’s the only such transaction they’ve ever had.

So why my fascination with cash today? Thumbing through my bank statement earlier this afternoon, I was amazed to find that I haven’t been to a cash machine since the 13th of March. With no bars, cafes or restaurants open, there’s simply no need for it any more. Every so often we buy eggs that come from the farm at Innerwengen with cash, but that’s about it. How times change.

In case you haven’t already guessed, it’s been raining all day, so we’re stuck indoors.

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It’ll soon be time for the next phase of the lockdown exit plan. Businesses are preparing to receive customers again, and everything is being tidied up, repainted, polished, washed, or whatever it takes to make a business look attractive. The campsite at Lauterbrunnen looks a picture.

Timber!

It’s time for another run, so here I go.

The pasture around the house is getting quite lush now the sun has returned. I think we may need to get a couple of sheep before long.

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It’s the last day we can visit Mürren for a while, as the cable car is having its annual revision starting tomorrow. The cabin has a capacity of 100 people, but in these troubled times it is limited to just 15.

There’s a spot in the village with a stunning view where tourists gather in great numbers to take selfies. Today we have it to ourselves.

Ali went for the full Instagram look.

We walk back towards Grütschalp alongside the railway. It’s a much nicer day than we’d expected.

The railway is very old, and it needs to be made accessible to wheelchair users. New, raised platform at Winteregg.

As well as new platforms there’ll be new trains, which will be really nice when we come over here to ski.