Jungfrau region, Switzerland - June 2008

After a somewhat delayed start to our trip (they couldn't start our plane) we touched down in Zurich just after midday. From the airport we had a much smoother, but probably more expensive train trip through Bern, down to Interlaken, finishing at Wilderswil, at the beginning of the Lauterbrunnen valley, and the starting point for our exploration of the Jungfrau region. We'd seen lots of photos, but nothing really prepared us for what we were going to see over the next five days.

Before heading to our first hotel for the week, we decided to make the most of the reasonable weather and travel up the cog railway to Schynige Platte, allegedly one of the best views in all the Alps, and also the starting point for our first big walk of the trip. Having watched the forecasts, we weren't sure whether we'd see anything, so we thought it was worth a trip up while the sun was out.

Halfway up the mountain, the view of Interlaken.

Us at Schynige Platte, a little cloudy but the wide-ranging views were still magnificent.

We realised while we were up at Schynige Platte, that the Faulhornweg, the walking track we'd intended to follow the next day, was closed. So we decided that given our early start, we'd sleep in a little and head to Grindelwald on the train. We returned to the lovely little village of Wilderswil where we checked into our hotel, The Alpenblick, and tucked into the obligatory beer and schnitzel for dinner.

The view from our room, Monch and Jungfrau visible in the distance.

We got on the train and over to Grindelwald around mid-morning, and thought that seeing as though we missed out on our walk, that we'd catch a gondola up to First, at the end of the Faulhornweg, and visit the Bachalpsee, a beautiful lake up in the hills.

Roger David pose, halfway up the track to the Bachalpsee. While the day was slightly cloudy, it was quite warm, even up on the mountain, which was a good five or six degrees cooler.

Fee takes a drink from the ice cold stream of water melting off the snow above. As we approached the end of the walk we were lucky enough to see what we thought was either an Eagle or Hawk, stalking a mountain goat. Luckily the goat ran away.

The stunning Bachalpsee, with its mirror surface, was still partly frozen.

After a big day Fee took the chance to take a little kip in the sun.

Looking over the Bachalpsee to the Wetterhorn (left) and Schreckhorn(right).

A curious friend popped its head out to see if we had any food. The marmotte went away empty handed.

Get in! Lunch was very well received after a long walk. Everything here is big - big beer, big bratwurst, and big mountains. We filled our bellies, and headed back down the gondola to Grindelwald, where we checked in to the Hotel Fiescherblick. Our room (and our balcony) was just above the tree on the left.

The view of Eiger from our balcony. Just stunning. After coming back from Bachalpsee, we spent the rest of the afternoon napping in shade, gazing totally contentedly at the mountains and glaciers. The next morning we got on the train an headed up to Alpiglen, a farming village at the foot of the Eiger (or 'Ogre'). For many the north face of the Eiger (that you can see below, is the holy grail of mountaineering, a near vertical wall of rock, ice and totally unpredictable weather.

Looking up at the monsterous Eiger. There's no real way to explain the sheer scale of this place, its unbelievable. The walk to this point had probably taken the best part of an hour and a half of uphill slog, but the views in every direction were to die for. You can see in the photo above how quickly the clouds can form around the summit. The photo below shows the view back to the Wetterhorn and Grindelwald, which is the village at its base. If you squint you might be able to pick out the church near where we stayed.

Our first achievement, reaching the saddle ridge before traversing over to the Eigergletscher station.

When we reached Eigergletscher, we were greeted with one of the most awe-inspiring views I have ever seen. I was almost out on my feet, but this caused me to nearly run up the short slope to the spot where Fiona is sitting. From the left, we have the rear of the Eiger, its glacier and Monch (Monk). Again, there is no way to convey the sheer size of the view in front of us.

Above and below, us on the moraine wall (the hills of rock carved and crushed by the glacier) below Eigergletscher. Below you can see the view across the Lauterbrunnen valley to Murren, where we would end our trip.

We'd previously thought that the weather came from behind the mountains, however we were surprised to learn that it actually comes from the mountains. Apparently in those clouds, it could very well be snowing or hailing, despite it being nearly 30 degrees where we were.


A well earned T-Shirt tan!


After our second night in Grindelwald, we set off for Murren, visiting Mannlichen along the way. This view of the Eiger was taken on our way up the gondola to Mannlichen.


View of Eiger Moch and Jungfrau from the summit of Mannlichen. From there, we traversed the Lauterbrunnen valley below with its magnificent waterfalls, and headed up to Murren.

A beautiful walk through the pastures behind Murren, such a tranquil, beautiful place. This was our last day in Switzerland, and this perfect day did nothing to make us want to go home. As you can see below, we were also making plenty of friends.

We walked from Murren down a mountain track to the train station, where we sat and daydreamed our last few hours away under the warm sun, gazing over perhaps the most amazingly beautiful place we have ever seen. This trip, at least for me, was one of the best things we have ever done, and we are determined to return before we come home.

Snowdonia

We recently spent a long weekend in Snowdonia in northern Wales. We visited this part of the world last year, and walked up Mol Siabod. We had been planning on walking up Mt Snowdon the next day, but we just couldn't face it as our legs were so tired. So we were back for round 2, to conquer the highest mountain in England and Wales.

After an easy drive over to Wales on the Saturday morning, we did a warm up walk to stretch the legs



The unveilling of legs that have not seen daylight in the past 12 months

Check out those lilly-white beauties!

Day 2: the weather was looking like it was threatening to rain (which it did), so we opted for a low level walk, rather than ascending into the clouds up to the the peak of Mt Snowdon. This is a view across a lake at the base of Mol Siabod, near Capel Curig, with the Snowdon horseshoe off in the distance

Day 3: the sun was shining and there was a nice cool breeze, as we set off along the pyg track up to the summit of Mt Snowdon

Not a bad spot to have lunch

We made it!

Tiptoeing through the tulips in Holland

I have been planning a spring-time trip to Holland since we left Australia. I wasn't organised enough to go there last year, so it was fabulous to make it over this year.
We spent a day in Amsterdam, which is somewhere Shannon had been before but I had not. We stayed in an awesome little B'n'B run by these 2 great guys God and Wimmo. They have it set up like a tropical jungle oasis right in the middle of Amsterdam.
I really liked Amsterdam, it is a city of contrasts. One side is made up of peaceful canals, quiet little streets and interesting architecture. The other side is the seedy red light district and 'coffee houses' that spew sweet smoke out into the street.

There are millions of bicycles everywhere, with very little traffic in the city. We even saw a triple decker floating bicycle parking lot on one of the canals. As we would discover in the following days, it's a great way to get around, and a great way to keep fit as you go about your day to day business.
We discovered these great cevapcici baguettes, which we tucked into just before our visit to the Van Gogh museum.
I knew Paula was thinking about a career change, but I didn't know she was setting up shop in the red light district of Amsterdam.







We caught a train from Amsterdam to Leiden, and then caught a bus out to Noordwijkerhout where we stayed in a huge hotel that had been converted from an old Shell research station.
From here, we hired bicycles to go and explore the bulbfields around Lisse.

On our first day with the bikes, we set off on a 20km round trip through the fields around Lisse, in the heart of the bulb growing district of Holland.
It was a touch too early in the season for most of the tulips, but there were lots of daffodils and narcissus in bloom and countless fields of hyacinths, which had the most delicious scent.
The ride was quite challenging, and we were knackered by the end of the day. Thankfully it was mostly quite flat, but it was difficult riding into a head wind at times.

In the evening we found a nice little pub to rest our weary legs and quench our thirst with a couple of Heinekens.

Cycling around the fields you see the commercial scale of the flower industry. It's quite like the market gardens in Werribee, but they're growing flowers instead of vegetables. One thing I didn't realise was that these fields are for the purpose of harvesting the bulbs, rather than the flowers. One day we saw a machine in a fields chopping the heads off all the tulips. This is part of the process for growing good bulbs, but the flowers themselves are left to rot on the ground.














The next day we visited the Keukenhof gardens in Lisse. These gardens put on a display every spring, which is a showcase for the Dutch bulb growing industry. As you can see, it was spectacular. The gardens are enormous, and are filled with every imaginable type of bulb.
They also have an exhibition in a huge glasshouse in the centre of the gardens, which has a display of the more unusual types of bulbs and new hybrids that people have developed. I'm sure this was an arduous part of the day for Shannon, but I loved it and was oohing and aahing everywhere I looked. There were tiny delicate tulips only a few inches tall, right up to monstrous blooms that stood 4 foot tall.
Lunch this day was another triumph - we discovered hot ham rolls. Just literally hot ham in a roll with that delicious euro-style mayonnasie, yum!
We took literally hundreds of photos that day. We'll spare you from looking at all of them! But I have them catalogued for when I finally have a garden of my own.