Summer is at an end, and the cows that produced all the cheese that we saw yesterday, are coming down from the high pastures. Here they come.
Many of the cows are dressed-up, and the cowherds wear traditional clothing.
The cows do a complete lap of the village, and dozens of people turn out to see them.
The cattle will return to their farms and smallholdings for the winter. We’ll see them again in late spring.
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.
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.
We had a big get-together at the Eiger last night, and between us we ate all the steaks they had.
Naturally we ended up in Rocks afterwards.
Aneta made shots. Raffi seems to like the look of them.
We all had a slow start this morning.
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.
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.
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.
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