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Val has her German class this afternoon, but it’s a nice morning, so we can grab a quick walk. The cable car takes us up to Männlichen. We had expected it to be pretty cold up there, but it turned out to be quite mild, particularly in the sunshine. We walked around to Kleine Scheidegg, which takes a little more than an hour.

Vaccine certificates are the topic of many conversations at the moment. You need one if you want to visit a bar or restaurant. Swiss and other European certificates work fine, but none of the others are recognised by the app which checks them. This is a huge problem for the proprietors, who certainly don’t want to turn away customers. It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out – the Swiss hate losing money. I hate not being able to get a beer too, so I’ve no doubt a solution will be forthcoming before long.

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Last night we hiked up into the forest above Wengen, laden with meat, bread, potatoes, beer and wine. There are thousands of public barbecues in Switzerland, and even here in tiny Wengen we have three. Emily had already got the fire going when we arrived.

We had a really good feast, and it was dark by the time we hiked home.

This morning we’re doing another section of our walk around lake Thun. We begin at Faulensee, and first we need to climb high above the lake. The views make the climb worthwhile.

Our destination is the village of Leissigen. It’s a couple of hours walk.

On our way home we popped into the Gemeinde (local council) and picked up our new residence permits. While we were waiting for the train we bumped into Robert and Jeanne, who are here for a couple of weeks after an 18 month absence. We enjoyed a beer together on the Eiger terrace.

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The big day has arrived, and it’s the 28th running of the toughest marathon in the world. The route starts down at the airfield in Interlaken, and winds its way up to Eigergletscher via Lauterbrunnen and Wengen.

There are about 8000 competitors this year – numbers were limited owing to the pandemic. Here’s Jana, the Estonian running machine.

And Tim, trying to catch her. She eventually beat him by 0.3 seconds.

The winner was a Colombian called Jose Cardona. He ran to Eigergletscher in 3 hours and 5 minutes.

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The last few days have been taken up with visits to the eye clinic, German lessons for Val, and keeping out of the rain. Today we went to a big ‘out of town’ shopping centre in Thun. I’d found a jacket I liked online and fortunately one of the shops had them in stock. I found a nice gilet to go with it too, which rather blew the budget, but hey ho.

It’s still raining, and my new jacket claims to be completely waterproof. We’ll find out on our way to Rocks later.

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We’re off to Einigen again today, but this time we’ll be walking in the opposite direction, towards the city of Thun at the end of the lake. Most of the shoreline around Thun is laid out like a series of parks. Lots of wildlife.

And lots of boats. Every inlet is full of them.

After a couple of hours we reach the end of the lake. View back towards Interlaken, and the high alps where we live.

The river Aare flows out of the lake in a northerly direction. It joins the Rhein which flows into the North Sea.

Thun Castle in the distance.

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We’ve been very lucky with the weather for the past few days, and our luck seems to be holding. Time to do another section of the path around lake Thun. We catch the bus to a village called Einigen.

We ate our sandwiches on a bench in the churchyard, and headed towards Spiez. We explored a hill called Spiezberg, which gave us lovely views of the vineyards, the castle and the harbour below.

Another good day out.

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Emily is good at football, and she’s started playing for Interlaken Ladies. Last night was the first home game of the season, so we thought we’d go and take a look.

The ground is very nice, with a bar and cafe. Emily played on the right wing. Here she is with a cross into the penalty box.

And here she is again. The opposing team are from a small town called Kerzers, which is in canton Fribourg to the north of us.

The result was 0-0, but the football was competitive and very enjoyable to watch. We’ll certainly go again.