On Top of the World
The day dawned perfectly clear - and I mean, not one cloud in the sky. The temperature was set to be in the 30's and as there are no decent riding roads around here, I decided to go up a mountain by alternative means.
The first stage is a cable car from Lauterbrunnen. Then a train along the top of the ridge to Murren. Everything above Lauterbrunnen is a traffic free zone but the locals have delivery Apes and scooters to buzz around on so I think it is awfully discriminatory to not allow Henry up the hill.
Murren is a fairly big village catering wholly to the tourist dollar (franc) and consists of a hundred hotels and two hundred restaurants. To get to the next cable car you have to walk the entire length of the village and the temptations of the shops are barely resistible. My credit card took a beating.
The next cable car is in two stages and we were jam packed in like cattle. It's quite a smooth ride - albeit hot and smelly but as we got higher, the temperature got lower and the sweating cattle got less offensive. It was a very pleasant 13o at the top.
Schilthorn has a very interesting history. It was used in the James Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service and consequently quite a few of the souvenirs in the gift shop are James Bond related. They even show clips of the movie in the cinema.
The ski run from the summit is a black run and the start of the "Inferno" race each year. They also have the Inferno Triathlon in summer which ends at the 2970m peak.
I just liked the view!
I liked the view so much I stayed up there enjoying it for 3 hours. It was magnificent.
The entire English Girl Guides troop was also at the top and had taken up every inch of the viewing platform as their picnic space so I ate my sandwiches standing up with the Jungfraujoch as my vista.
When I had finally exhausted my photographic subjects and had almost used up the whole SD card with mountain shots, I reluctantly got on the cable car and headed back down to Murren.
I contemplated walking down to Gimmelwald but caught sight of the track and decided against it. I got the (cattle) cablecar instead. Gimmelwald is a much smaller village and consists mostly of actual working farms. There is a great looking Youth Hostel with the best view of all hostels and as an added bonus it was flying the Aussie flag. I bought myself an icecream in the Honesty Shop and then got the final cablecar down to the valley floor.
An overcrowded bus saw me back in Lauterbrunnen where the temperature was still in the 30's at 6pm.
And when I uploaded my photos, they didn't portray the true splendour of what I saw - they never do - so I have only inflicted about 30 of them onto you.
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