HEADING FOR THE HEIGHTS IN SWITZERLAND

Within four hours we had travelled on steamers, trains and mountain rail, making an excursion from our lakeside camp site almost to the roof of Europe

As we drove our car towards Switzerland we found half timbered houses painted in vivid colours and assumed that the puce, purple and pinks must be there to brighten up the winter scene when all is covered in snow.


The mountains were breathtaking, fortunately the motorways tunnel right through them, so driving is easy.

Also breathtaking is the amount you have to pay to use the motorways and tunnels!

Eventually we left the motorway and took the road to Brienz in the Bernese Oberland, driving over a mountain road that twisted and turned like a cork screw.

In the morning when the mist rose and the immensity of the mountains above us became clear, we saw little brown specks where the night before we had seen spots of light.

These turned out to be the high farms where some of the men spend the summer milking the cows and making cheese.

They are not all farmers. One young fellow told us that it made a welcome change from his regular job in a bank in Berne.

Children were swimming in the lake and with a canoe available for use it was all very pleasant. It was difficult to tear ourselves away, but had been told about so many local attractions that we decided to flex our Swiss Rail Passes and took to the water on one of the steamers.

The Swiss Rail Pass will take you almost everywhere and give you a real break from driving the car. All the steamers connected with the trains, as indeed did most of the post buses. We were surprised at the amount of ground that we covered effortlessly in a short space of time.

Within four hours we had travelled on steamers, trains and mountain rail, making an excursion from our lakeside camp site almost to the roof of Europe, high up close to the Eiger and Jungfrau.

Across the valley we saw what looked like a giant yellow caterpillar clinging to the mountains side. It turned out to be to be the train up the cog railway to
Kleine Scheidegg . When it pulled into at the station at Grindelwald I got the feeling that it could have come direct from Tokyo. The doors opened we were engulfed in Japanese tourists.

We boarded it, paid the supplement and headed for the heights. Such was the gradient that it almost felt as though we were taking off in an aircraft.


We passed cows with large soft brown eyes and goats with huge bell's that clanged. They all look quite at home, it was the Japanese hikers clad in knickerbockers and Tyroleon hats that looked a trifle out of place.

The next day, at Meirningem , which we reached using the Panorama Express, so called because of its enormous glass picture windows, we found the Sherlock Holmes Museum.
This is a reconstruction of his "home" at 221 b. Baker Street.

There is transport from town to the Reichenbach Falls where the great detective is supposed to have had his final encounter with the arch fiend Moriarty.

 

There were bright yellow signs pointing out the mountain walks and indicating how long they should take but using our magical Swiss Rail Pass we hopped on to a mustard yellow post bus and took a ride up the mountains to Schwarzwaldalt.

These ‘PTT’ buses have distinctive loud horns, which the driver sounds as he approaches the steep hairpin bends. It’s a warning for all other vehicles to get out of the way.

Legally the post-buses have right of way. Soon we came up to the mountain meadows where we saw wooden slatted houses raised on stilts, no doubt to be above the deep snow that would lie there when winter came.

We passed a signs that warned of wild boar and wooden bridges rattled beneath our tyres. Looking out, the wheels of our vehicle seemed to be excitingly close to the edge off the road the road and a fairly steep drop to the valley floor below.

The buses, steamers and trains made it a memorable trip and in the evenings we sipped wine with new found Dutch friends and enthused about the hillsides carpeted in beautiful flowers and low lying rhododendrons that coloured the ground alongside the mountain railways.

Report by______________________Allan Rogers

 

 

FACT FILE

‘Swiss Rail Pass’ and information Switzerland Tourism
Tel: 02071 734 1921.