Stopping for Air near Lake Thun - lake and mountains
It's a long drive from Dorset to Switzerland. Heavy traffic on the M25, a trip through the tunnel and the long slog down the French Autotroutes. Mind you we did stop overnight twice. We had opted for a late departure from home and our first stop was near Arras in Dury at the Banting Room. It was an Apartment named after a Canadian Doctor during the First World War. Dr Banting went on to discover insulin so he is worth Googling. The house was on the outskirts of a quiet village and we had a pleasant walk and discovered a CWGC Cemetery with a huge number of Unknown Soldiers. On a lighter note, we also found a small Bar and Tabac. with fresh bread and a cold beer. From Dury we drove on down and stopped again for the night in somewhat larger town of Langres. This was not quite so interesting but it was a nice apartment. We felt a bit guilty as it seemed to be a very residential area and the apartment we stayed in should really have been someone’s home not an overnight stopping place for tourists. We should have left early from home and headed to Aeschi with just one stop, oh well live and learn!
We made it to the border with Switzerland and paid for our vignette. We then by-passed Berne and headed up to Aeschi. Our new Apartment Ferienwohnung Pfrundmatte was one of the best places we have stayed, ever, both in terms of location and facilities. Our Swiss host was on hand to show us around and tell us where to park etc. He also gave us some tips for the next day and our planned mountain excursion. Aeschi is up the mountain from Lake Thun but its not a difficult road and worth the climb. It is only a small village but it still has Restaurants, a Bank, and a Supermarket. We only had two nights there and we wished we were staying longer.
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| Our view |
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| Our view from the Balcony |
As we had arrived early we had plenty of daylight to pop back down to Lake Thun and have a look around the very pleasant town of
Spiez. We had a delightful time wandering by the lakeside and around the
castle on this beautiful sunny day. There were a few tourists around but it was certainly not busy. Quite a few people were at the lake side, swimming and sun-bathing near the castle. We couldn't blame them.
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| TW at Lake Thun |
Our Swiss mountain adventure was scheduled for the next day. Following the advice of our host we chose to park at
Wilderswil and then took train up to
Lauterbrunnen. From there we would head up to
Wengen on a mountain railway.
This all worked swimmingly until Wengen where I realised I had left my favourite
NZ hat on the train, The
Wengen Station staff were brilliant and rang the guard on our train, then heading further up the mountain to
Kleine scheidegg, to ask him to drop off the hat at Wengen on the way back, This worked swimmingly and having retrieved my hat I was able to thank the guard who happened to be an expat
Aussie. He had recognised that the hat was something special.
After a walk through Wengen we headed up to
Männlichen on a double deck cable car. Top deck was extra so we stayed low but still enjoyed the ride, The views from Männlichen are stupendous in Summer and it is well worth the ride up. From there we headed back into Wengen. We had a ski holiday in Wengen about 30 years ago with a group from our tennis club. Have to say that today it was not quite as pretty as I had hoped. We had expected floral window boxes but it was quite bare and seemed very international rather than
Swiss Chocolate Box. From Wengen we jumped back on the train and continued up to
Kleinescheidegg to take in the view and have lunch. We found a nice table at
Restaurant Eigernordwand with a grand view of the
Eiger. After a very enjoyable lunch we were back on the train heading down to the busy town of Grindelwald. It was very busy at the end of the day. I suppose many of the tourists had come down from the surrounding mountains.
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| Kleinescheidegg |
