Swiss National day ended well yesterday with a curry and a big firework display.
As I write we’re sitting in Zurich departures waiting for our delayed aeroplane. Hopefully it won’t be long, I’m looking forward to a pint in Oddies.
In 1291, the first 3 cantons concluded an alliance. This alliance grew over the following 500 years and eventually became the Switzerland of today. Geneva was the last canton to join in 1815, having previously been annexed by France during the Napoleonic wars. There are now 26 cantons in the Swiss confederation.
Each year on August 1st the Swiss celebrate the confederation with music, dancing and feasting. So here we go.
Lots of food. I could ruin my diet in about 5 minutes in here.
And of course the dancers.
Later on we’ll have fireworks and the party will continue well into the night.
It’s warm again and not really a day for exercise, but I need to squeeze in a run as we have Swiss national day tomorrow and there’ll be all sorts of things to do and see in the village. We head for Stechelberg on the bus. Val heads off and I start from the usual spot aiming to run 5km. Val got a nice shot of me as I passed her just before the cable car station.
I ran on towards Lauterbrunnen, my watch giving me a buzz each time I completed a kilometre. After 5 buzzes I was almost in Lauterbrunnen and still feeling good, so I turned around and ran back to the campsite, then turned again and went back to the village. My watch buzzed for a 6th time, so that’s 6km.
Very happy with that, even though I was getting pretty slow by the end.
This morning we met Neil and set off for Mürren. The North Face trail is a circular route. Along the path there are info-boards giving some history of the peaks.
Passing under the cable car at Schiltgrat.
A nice spot for lunch.
We stopped for a beer at the Eiger when we got back to Mürren. Good day out.
We’re off to Mürren today, as I’d like to try to run to Grütschalp. I reckon it’s 5km give or take a few metres. The mountain trail has lots of ups and downs and is popular with walkers. As usual Val set off first while I had a warm-up walk in the other direction to add a bit of distance.
I made it to Grütschalp in good time, knocking more than 4 minutes off my previous best.
Really pleased with that. I’ve been trying to go a bit faster with my runs around Wengen recently, but I’m surprised to see such a big improvement. We’ll have a well-deserved curry later.
We had a good evening out at the Crystal bar last night, with Steve and Colin playing and Bubba on the mixing desk. It did sound very good.
Every so often we nipped outside to see whether the Lunar eclipse was visible. We got the faintest glimpse of it over the Jungfrau, but by the time the moon had cleared the mountains the eclipse was over. Later on Beanie arrived and did a few numbers.
It was raining when we got up this morning, and it hasn’t stopped since. We’ve had a quiet day at home.
We have weather warnings today for high UV levels. The Swiss use an 11 point scale:
Here in Wengen we’re at UV7, so I slapped on the factor 50 and went for my run. It went surprisingly well, with a new fastest 1km split using the PC philosophy of absolutely legging it on the downhill bits.
Our plan this afternoon was to walk the Eiger Trail from Eigergletcher. UV levels increase with altitude, so up there it’s UV9. More suntan cream and some headgear, and up we go.
Eigergletcher is a bit of a building site at the moment owing to the new lift that’s being built. The walk has therefore been diverted down the ski piste and into the Salzegg bowl.
Faced with the prospect of having to regain all that altitude we decided to heed the advice in the weather warning and return to Scheidegg via Fallboden.
Follow