I’ve had a cold for the last few days, so we haven’t done much. Today however, the forecast is good so it would be a shame to miss a day out. We set off for Interlaken. There are no trains along the valley owing to track maintenance, but there is a replacement bus service.

Every autumn the shipping company sells Seepasses (Lake passes). You can only buy one before the start of the summer season, which is usually Easter. We’ve never managed to get one of these passes in the past, as I always forget to apply for one, but last November I somehow had the presence of mind to buy one. This gives us unlimited travel on our two lakes for a whole year. Time for a boat ride on Lake Brienz.

It’s just about warm enough to sit out on deck enjoying a coffee. Very civilised. Our destination is a village called Ringgenberg. Here it is in the distance with another steamer pulling away from the quay.

Our boat drops us off, and continues its journey.

Ringgenberg is a small village with a handful of lakeside hotels. There are also small buildings on stilts, presumably as protection against flooding.

Here’s a Swiss story which sounds true, but in my view probably isn’t. An enthusiastic schoolteacher at Ringgenberg school wanted to teach his class about the Solar System. The teacher proposed that the pupils build a scale model of it in the school grounds.

Our sun is 1.39 million kilometres in diameter, so it was decided that the model sun would have a diameter of 1.39 metres, giving the model a scale of 1 to 1 billion. This was a catastrophic misjudgement of the actual size of the Solar System. It quickly became apparent that once all the planets were added, at the correct distances, the resulting scale model would be 12 kilometres long. They decided to build it anyway, and Pluto ended up near the shore of Lake Thun, on the other side of Interlaken. Here are the Earth and moon. So small in comparison with the sun that they have to be kept in boxes.

Some of the gardens along the path are an absolute riot of colour. Spring comes early down here on the lake.

Somehow we missed Mars, but here’s Jupiter. At this scale, even the biggest planet in the Solar System is only 143 millimetres across.

The Interlaken – Lucerne express passes alongside our path.

Our last planet for today.

And here’s a diagram of the whole model Solar System.

So, do you believe the story about the schoolteacher and the origin of the model Solar System? It would be great if it was true, but somehow I doubt it.

But, genuine story or not, the takeaway for the science kids from this tourist attraction is that the Solar System is absolutely vast, and the planets that occupy it are tiny. The distances between them are almost beyond our comprehension. For every millimetre that we hiked along the scale model today, the real Solar System measures 1,000 kilometres.