A SWISS ADVENTURE

 

At the moment I'm in the throes of making an online book about our recent holiday.

I'm using Blurb as I had great success with the book I made about our last overseas holiday.

 

 

While we are on holiday we write a holiday diary every night and we email this home to our elderly parents who get a great kick out of sharing our holidays.

These emails are then passed around the Retirement Village so quite a few oldies share our adventures.

I use these diaries (edited quite a bit !!) to add the text to our photo book so it becomes a great momento of a wonderful holiday.

 

Of course making this book has a lot of side benefits...

I'm reliving  a wonderful holiday in detail.
 

Which brings me to the subject of today's post.

 

Jungfrau

 

A visit to the top of this huge mountain is a wonderful experience so I thought I would share it with you. Here's is a little episode from our Travel Diary written by Tony:

 

" Even though the weather was cloudy we were in the car by 7.30 heading for Thun as we had a three hour rail journey ahead of us .

We had our return tickets purchased by 8.30 for a 9am departure. The railway attendant was extremely helpful and printed out a schedule including platform numbers as we had three train changes. The tickets cost CH240 for the two of us and would normally have cost CH480, so we have recouped our Half Price Fare purchase already.

After an uneventful trip to Lauterbrunnen we made our second train change to the special Alpine train which is a little like a tramcar as this was where we commenced climbing to the highest railway station in the world at 3454 metres above sea level. The track had a third line in the middle with teeth that help pull the train up the mountain. Jungfraujoch was a further two hours from there.

 

The scenery from here was wonderful - high snow -covered mountains, green valleys specked with dark brown chalets and cascading waterfalls.

 

 

 

We continued to marvel at the scenery when we reached Kleine Scheidegg and changed trains again.

 

The final leg is the engineering masterpiece of this railway that took sixteen years to build - a tunnel through  Eiger and Monch seven kilometres long. Finished in 1912, it was built at high altitude in inaccessible mountains and using no machinery- all the way to the top of Jungfraujoch.

How did they do that ?

There were two stops as we journeyed through the long tunnel deep inside the Eiger. They contain viewing windows and toilets and everyone piles off the train to see the view of the mountains. At the first one, the window was completely covered with ice so back to the train we went.

When we stopped at the next one people were a bit reluctant to move from their seats but we always give it a try and to our delight this view was not blocked at all.

 

 

It was a terrific view of a huge glacier.

Up really close.

Now usually, you  only see the end of a glacier where it's all dirty and yucky but this was pristine.

Huge white ice boulders tumbled upon each other.

Quite a sight.

On arrival at Jungfraujoch we entered the building and gathered our thoughts. If you wondered about the tunnel, how did they build this five story building on top of this mountain?

 

This building has shops, restaurants and a conference centre all with glass panelled walls for maximum viewing.   

 

We arrived at an elevator in the tunnel labelled the Sphinx, so we took this very fast elevator to the very top of the mountain and arrived at a steel mesh viewing platform outside. We took the plunge out into the snow and waited for the mountains to appear out of the clouds.

Unfortunately, apart from the odd glimpse, they were not going to be kind to us today. A clear day in the mountains at this altitude probably does not happen a lot in the spring time.

Next display of interest was the ice tunnel bored through ice, a round trip walk with ice carving displays.



 

 

The Plateau was another outdoor viewing area of interest. You go out a big door onto a fairly narrow snowy outcrop that has a 200 metre dog leg walk up a slope to the top where a Swiss flag is.

Helen was the first to go and started doing wheelies and a balancing act as the high traffic area snow had turned to ice ! By then the wind was blowing and the snow was getting heavy.

 

 

 

I quickly followed and we got half way up the hill and Helen decided not to go any further . You know she is an accident waiting to happen so probably a good call. Deciding to continue alone, I then became the official photographer for Jungfrau as every couple wanted me to take their photo under the Swiss flag because I was alone.

Before long I had frost bite and could not press the shutter anymore!

I handed the cameras back and headed for the exit hanging onto a rope strung between posts. 

Feeling a little disappointed because everybody but me had a picture of themselves standing under the Swiss flag, I consoled myself with a pleasant lunch looking at the mountains as they occasionally broke out of the clouds.

We had thoroughly enjoyed Jungfrau "top of Europe " and headed for the station to start our journey down the mountain.

 

On the journey down we got to talking with the conductor, who seemed to speak every language in the world. He suggested to us that we get off the train at Allmend and walk downhill to Wengen then pick up the next train that came through.
You can see people walking along the trail in the photo below.

By then we were well below the snow line and in a very picturesque valley so we decided to take the challenge. We hopped off at Allmend and the ticket man was good enough to show us where the trail was behind the station round behind a restaurant !

 

Now the trails here are clearly marked and are mostly bitumen, sometimes gravel. This is a very big walking area through the Mountains with all grades of challenging tracks.

 Of all the walks we have done this was one of the best, it was like walking into a Swiss postcard !

Just when we thought it couldn't get any better a farmer and a dozen cows with cow bells passed us heading up the hill.
We quickly put the camera on movie mode to record the sound of Switzerland !

 

Eventually we arrived at beautiful Wengen and were on the train heading home
after a stunning day."


Well if you have made it this far congratulations !!

Must get back to making my book.

Cheers.

PLANS

We've been busy buying tickets on one of these.......



so we can plan a holiday starting here...,

then travel south-east to here for a week, ..............

 

to visit old, old villages like this one.... 

and after that move north to spend a week here, ..... 

 

 on this beautiful lake
and in this lovely old town, .......

then further north to finish with a week here ....
 

 

so we can visit some of these.




Lots of planning and research to do until May next year.

Six months !!!!

Can't wait.

Cheers.

PS. Since I haven't been there yet I pinched these photos from the internet. Next year I hope to have some of my own to show you !

BADGERS

A recent comment from Yorkshire Pudding sent me off to investigate the photos we took on our holiday in England earlier in the year.

He wanted a blog post about badgers.

Now , as an Aussie, I don't know much about badgers.

I do know I was anxious to see one in the wild when we were in the UK

and believe me I looked

but , unfortunately, the only badger I managed to see was a dead one on the side of the road near Ludlow,

lying there like it was asleep

it's pretty black and white stripey nose stretched out in front

and its thick cream fur unblemished ( luckily !).

.

(The two above photos from the internet)

However,

when we went walking through the fields above our cottage in Martinstown, Dorset

along those wonderful public footpaths that you find everywhere in the country, edged all the way by cow parsley in glorious bloom,

we climbed to the top of the hill and came out

to this beautiful view over the surrounding countryside.

A little further on we came upon a small section of large trees

and in amongst the trees we found

 this !

(click to enlarge )

a large mounded area.

Could this be a badger sett?

It covered a very large area and was riddled with entrances.

At the time we had no idea.

 Thought perhaps it was the home of lots of rabbits

but since then I've come to believe it was

perhaps the home of many badgers?

I eagerly await your verdict.

Cheers.

"People come - they stay for a while, they flourish, they build - and they go.

It is their way

But we remain

There were badgers here, I've been told, long before that same city ever came to be,

And now ther are badgers here again.

We are an enduring lot, and we may move out for a time but we wait, and are patient, and back we come.

And so it will ever be." 

~ Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, Chapter 4.

OH TO BE IN PARIS FOR BASTILLE DAY

Cheers.

A LITTLE EXPERIMENT

This is just a little experimental video of Ludlow in Shropshire, England .

It includes a couple of special photos for Bernard ( and a peek at a special friend of ours)

Cheers.

INTERESTING LISTS

I've been surfing around the blogging world looking at a few new blogs and I came upon this blog.

It's quite interesting. It appears that it is all about making lists.

I thought I would join in this one.

...............................

"So here's this week's list challenge....

What have YOU learned from a place you once visited? (Either another county or another state....or maybe even your own culture...) "

........................

So here's my list compiled as a result of our recent holiday in England.

1. People everywhere are friendly ... especially if you tell them how much you like their country.

2. Weather can be changeable so be prepared  - always have a jacket and an umbrella.

3. The locals that you speak to - like the people behind the bar at your local pub - know all the best places to see... and a few that are not in the guide books.

4. Shopping at local supermarkets is a lot of fun.

5. Joining National Trust and English Heritage allows you to visit lots of fantastic historical sites and stately homes

Dunster Castle

Cliveden House

 Four visits to NT properties and you've recouped your membership cost , the rest are free

6. Driving is easy on M roads if you stay away from inside and outside lanes - the one in the middle is a safe alternative .

Trucks stay in the left hand lane and cars traveling VERY fast occupy the right hand lane.

Watch out for white vans - they're all driven by madmen

7. A SAT-NAV device ( we have a TomTom ) is worth its weight in gold. It takes all the worry out of driving and allows you to see the countryside without having your head buried in a map . Saves marriages too !!

8. Visit cities and towns but stay in villages.

Shrewsbury

Westminster Abbey, London

Paddington Station - the ipod app for London Underground is an amazing help.

The countryside is lovely and it's where you'll have a better chance of meeting people.

9. Try a country walk.

There are thousands and the system of Public Footpaths is unique in the world.

10. Cream teas are a specialty.

Have one at every opportunity.

DeGrey's, Ludlow

 Clotted cream is devine!

Cheers.

Edit: I have changed naming of  the lanes around to the correct names so that no-one drives in the wrong lane because of information on my blog ( see Comments ). Don't want to cause any accidents !!