The sky was full of fog when we woke up, but by the time the eggs had boiled, it had completely cleared to a beautiful clear morning. We cycled to St Moritz railway station and found we had 45 minutes to wait for the next train, dang! But because all the trains start in St Moritz, ours was already in the station, so we hopped on board, grabbed a good seat and waited. The train was then delayed by engine trouble and we had to wait another 15 minutes, so unfortunately we spent one hour of a beautiful morning sitting on a stationery train in St Moritz.
At 11am we were finally on our way travelling on the Rhätische Bahn up the Bernina Valley to Alp Grüm at the top of the Bernina Pass; it was a stunningly beautiful ride. Rodney spent most of the journey hanging out of the window with camera in hand; I just sat back and enjoyed the view on both sides of the train. The Morteratsch Glacier was twinkling in the sunshine as we passed it and the peaks of all the mountains were mightily impressive.
At times the road runs right next to the train tracks and there is no fence separating them; watching the cars and motorbikes overtake sometimes made it feel like we were just in another lane of the road. Our ’Engadin Hiking Passes’ only covered us as far as Alp Grüm just over the Bernina Pass at 2,234m, so that was where we disembarked and watched the train do a 180° turn and head down the Poschiavo Valley to Tirana without us.
When the next train heading back to St Moritz arrived, we hopped on board and travelled back over the pass, past the creamy green Lago Bianco as far as Bernina-Diavolezza. We ate our sandwiches while waiting for the cable car to take us up over two ridges to Diavolezza and at the top we found ourselves in a huge snow bowl amongst magnificent mountain peaks.
Twenty minutes later were on the next cable car back down to the train station where we had about forty minutes to wait, so we found a nice patch of grass and buttercups by a river and both fell asleep in the sunshine. We rode the next train down as far as Punt Muragl station and walked over to the funicular railway which was just about to leave, at last a good connection! As we climbed higher and higher up to Muottas Muragl, all of St Moritz and the lakes behind came in to view, unfortunately so did the clouds.
We had a quick bite to eat and watched the clouds darkening as they travelled up the valley from Maloja, this meant that we didn’t really fancy doing our planned two hour hike around the mountain. So we wandered around up there for about an hour, enjoying the views over the Muragl Valley, before hiking back to the funicular railway station for the ride back down to Punt Muragl. The bus timetable at the bottom showed that we had just missed a bus, but we reckoned we had just enough time to jog back to the train station and catch the 5pm train back to St Moritz, rather than wait another half an hour for the next bus. It’s a request stop for the train and although a sign said “press the button for the train to stop”, we couldn’t find any buttons, so I stood by the track with my arm out. I’ve only ever done that for a bus before and it felt quite powerful having a six-carriage train pull up beside me.
We climbed aboard and by the time we got back to our bicycles at St Moritz, the rain was pouring down. Even with raincoats on, we still got absolutely soaked cycling back to the campsite, plus it was rather hard to see where we were going with the water in our faces and dripping off our hoods. Hot showers, a warm dinner and the heater on all evening drying our clothes, rounded off what seemed like a very long day of stunning views and lots of waiting for transportation.
