Cheese festival

Football last night. Emily opened the scoring in the first half, and Interlaken went on to win 3-0 against Holligen.

That puts Interlaken top of their league.

Today it’s the traditional end of season cheese festival. Plenty of people here this year.

The cheese is divided up amongst the owners of the cows.

And it’s not just cheese. There’s lots to eat, and we had a nice lunch.

A nice day, and we even managed to avoid the rain.

Schwendi to Zweilütschinen

Very clear sky on our way to the pub yesterday evening. It was a cold night.

Männlichen this morning. It’s strange to think we’ll be skiing up here in 8 weeks or so.

Our walk begins at a place in the valley called Schwendi. The valley is narrow, with just enough room for the road, the railway and the river.

We pass through the hamlet of Burglauenen. View back up the valley.

The next hamlet is called Lütschental. The valley suddenly opens up.

Eventually we reach the railway station at Zweilütschinen, where the train picks us up and takes us back to Lauterbrunnen. A nice walk on a beautiful day.

Thrill seekers

It’s a nice day, so we bought lunch from the bakery and had a walk in the valley. The first signs of autumn are appearing in the colours of the trees.

As we walk we hear a loud ‘crump’ from above. Some brave soul has jumped from the cliff, enjoyed a few seconds of free-fall, and then presumably hoped his parachute opens. Luckily, it did.

This somewhat hazardous sport is called BASE jumping, and Lauterbrunnen, with its near-vertical cliffs is one of most popular places in the world to do it. The jumpers are usually in groups, and sure enough a few seconds later another one jumped.

Whatever you think of the sanity of doing this, they certainly provide some entertainment for us walkers. Dinner at the Eiger with Emily and Vicky tonight.

The mountains are back

We’ve had two days of almost nonstop rain, and today has been overcast but dry. It’s cold. This evening however, the clouds suddenly disappeared.

All that rain fell as snow above about 2300 metres, so the Jungfrau looks splendid. Val had her hair done this afternoon, and I tried to silence our gurgling central heating. It’s still a bit noisy, but eventually I’ll get all the air out of the radiators.

Castles and queues

We spent most of yesterday in Interlaken, with another session to help me decide how to proceed with my eye treatment. Val got a nice shot of Interlaken castle. These days it’s used as council offices.

Big queues at the pharmacy. Everyone wants to go out on Saturday night, and to get into a bar you need a negative Corona test. Vaccine take-up hasn’t been great here, particularly amongst the young.

Emily’s sister Vicky is here for a few days. Val picked her up from the station, and she came round for dinner.

Emily was playing football at the nearby town of Steffisburg. The final score – Steffisburg 1, Interlaken 5, meant Emily was in very good spirits when she met us later in Rocks.

Poor weather was forecast for today, and sure enough it’s pouring with rain and very cold. Up at Scheidegg and Männlichen it’s snowing hard. The first signs of winter.

Därligen

Our plan to circumnavigate the lake continues today. We catch the bus to Leissigen, where our last walk ended. Lots of fruit trees here.

A bench with a view. It must be lunchtime.

Eventually we arrive at Därligen. It’s a very small village (population about 400), but the setting is lovely.

We caught the bus back to Interlaken, and queued-up for another antigen test so that we can have get a Corona certificate so we can eat out and go to the pub. Later this afternoon we learned that starting on Monday, the Swiss will be happy to recognise our U.K. vaccine certificates. Nice.