Itinerary: Saturday: bike ride through peaceful farmland to Thun and back
Sunday: hike an Alpine meadow with friends
Sounds like a quiet weekend, getting in touch with nature? It certainly started that way. The route we planned to Thun was not the shortest, for it took us through the Valley of the Gurbe River, renowned for cabbages and sauerkraut.
Gliding over the rolling hills, we passed classic Swiss scenery and paused in an ancient and amazingly serene rock church in Amsoldingen.
Then we rolled on down to Thun where the quiet ended. Thun was in festival mode. Streets were lined with booths and packed with people, amusement rides hard at work, and rock bands blaring as though they all wanted to be heard at the other end of the lake. We chose to leave Thun’s castle for another day and followed the edge of the Thun See to Schloss Oberhofen (Schloss is German for palace, more than a home, less than a fortress, usually pretty elaborate residence).
It was a beautiful day for a wedding—we saw at least 3 in progress, including in the courtyard at Oberhofen.
Our return route was more direct and that meant, unfortunately, quite a bit of time within earshot of the heavily trafficked A6 freeway. But we had clocked another 84 km on the bike and ticked off a few more Swiss sights.
Sunday, ah, that will be peaceful, yes? Our friends picked us up at the all-too-early hour of 7:15. We drove (via the A6) back south beyond Thun to Engstligenalp where Jon risked life and limb to try Klettersteig (aka via ferrata). This is climbing with a harness along a permanently-installed cable line. I took the easy way up in a gondola.
I arrived at the top at 9:30. It was just me and maybe 6 other people in view in the whole meadow. After a short nap atop a hillock, I woke to see a line of people walking the trail, including quite a few in wheelchairs! Switzerland believes in access: this meadow includes 5 km of wheelchair-accessible trails so everyone can get their dose of Alpine air. Climbing down from my perch, I started hiking with the crowd, passing the two restaurants, one of which had live music. It took walking almost an hour to the other side of the bowl to find ‘quiet’. There I could hear only the rippling streams and cowbells, the latter rather noisy in their own right. Jon and friends completed their climb and we pic-nic’d by a cold mountain stream.
We all walked down via the same path used by the cows when they come up in June for their summer pasturing. Please check out the video of the cow climb: http://www.adelboden.ch/en/page.cfm/NewsEvents/SommerEvents/Alpaufzug
This path was not as steep as Jon’s climb, but my toes still ache from being constantly pushed into my shoes!