Europe part 3 - The Swiss Alps

This takes us into the second week and aside from the wedding itself probably my favourite part of the holiday, the Swiss Alps, glaciers, snow capped mountains and all things green and beautiful...though my desperation to escape the heat of the previous week seemed a little odd even to myself when on arriving it became apparent that the temperature was almost at that of a UK winter and at night hovered at something around 3 degrees! A far cry from the 40's of Southern Italy and making my still rampant heat rash look amusingly out of place!

This journey was only a little over 200 miles but it took 7 hours and was the most beautiful!!

At each turn in the road we were presented with yet another breathtaking speactacle of nature, tree covered mountain sides, blue-green glacial rivers and lakes, amazing cloud formations, snow, sunshine, massive crags of mountains and the greenest green hillsides you ever saw. They (whoever 'they' are, say England is green, England has nothing on Switzerland)


If you ask Fletch why it should take so long to cover such a small distance he will tell you it was because I kept asking him to stop the car so I could take photographs...I reason however that it was as a result of the entire route being on winding Alpine roads! ;o)

Our destination on this occasion was a little town in central Switzerland called Engelberg, chosen because it is home not only to the only glacier in central switzerland, the Titlis Glacier but also because it boasts a campsite directly at the foot of said glacier!


Stunning....absolutely stunning, to wake up in the morning to the sight of our very own glacier, and see the sunrise lighting the early morning, dew drenched fields and hills was something else....if very cold!


We spent three days here just marvelling at the scenery and wandering around the pristine town set in the valley surrounded on all sides by mountains. The sun shone, and the clean fresh air gave everything an unsurpassed clarity.

The highlight however was my first ever cable car ride! These things are damned expensive as we were to discover, 80 Euros a hit for the most famous one!!....but as luck would have it a smaller and much steeper (hell, if you're gonna do it you might as well really do it)one, the Furenalp Gondola, was located right next to the camp site and at a more reasonable cost.

I don't 'do' heights but as with most things I don't do that very fact meant I had to do it, the view from the top and the experience had to be worth it...though it was with a degree of trepidation that I stepped into the not overly modern gondola and looked up at the mountain ahead of me and the almost vertical path of the cables!

Pah! What was there to be concerned about, the ride up the mountain side was fabulous, completely un-scary and utterly stunning! I seem to keep using the 'amazing/stunning/fabulous' kind of words in these posts but really, it was, it all was, without exageration all of those things

Once ontop of the mountain we stood almost level with the Titlis peak and the glacier, I don't have words to describe the sheer magnitude or beauty, nothing I say and no photograph could convey what being up there was like, just how truly amazing it is!




We walked a while and we just stood and looked and we walked some more to a place where we understood there should be wild Marmots (Murmeltier) in residence....and there were! Though it took a fair amount of time and patience (not my forte!) sitting in absolute silence (no mean feat for me I promise you) for them to appear.....and more time sat in silence to ensure they didn't detect us (luckily we were down wind of them) and scream there high decibel, high volume warning to one another and disappear again. We had seen them before in less 'natuaral' surroundings but seeing them in the wild going about their business was a whole different thing. We did take pictures but alas, short lenses don't really cut it for wildlife photography so if you want to see one go HERE.

There was however other 'wildlife' that made somewhat less demanding subjects!


Right then, that takes us to the last few days in Germany and Brussels (??) the question marks will be explained later....only one more holiday post I promise!