I had to start the day with another lovely warm shower in a little wooden hut on the top of the hill; such a pretty spot and a good shower too. Then we headed due east along the Rhone Valley towards Brig. About 5 kilometres out of Sierre we suddenly noticed that the roadside apricot stalls were no longer selling ‘abricots’, they were now selling ‘aprikosen’. Until this point, all signage was still in French, but now we had switched to German, so I put away the French phrase book and dug out my German school dictionary from 1967. I’ve now added “Mein Gott” to my exclamations and I really must stop saying “Look at that” just as Rodney is tackling a hair pin bend, because Rodney is threatening that one day he will look and we’ll be over the edge in Eileen….!
This area of the Rhone seems to be a very industrial area, but it is surrounded by lovely mountains. After Brig, the scenery changed back to beautiful, with dark wooden chalets settled amongst vivid green grass, scattered around the hills; just as I had imagined Switzerland would look.
We stopped briefly in Münster to stretch our legs and strolled in to the information centre in Gletsch where we picked up maps and chatted to a lovely local chap who told us all about the receding Rhone Glacier. Climate change has reduced the glacier back 2.5 kilometres since 1856 and even since Rodney was last here, at the age of 6, the glacier face has moved further back over a ridge above the Hotel Belvedere. He could remember where it was back then and was shocked to see how far it had shrunk back. Near to the information centre, the Dampfbahn Furka Bergstrecke narrow gauge cog-railway runs between Realp and Oberwald, and as one was due in, we waited to watch it steam in to the station. Ah, I’m trainspotting again…..
We drove the road up towards the Furkapass, stopping short at the Hotel Belvedere, where we were surrounded by funny little sports cars called ‘Caterhams’. It seems they had arrived from all over Europe and were having an annual gathering to ‘play’ with them on the passes and hairpin bends of Switzerland this year.
Behind the hotel, we paid our fees and walked the path up to the edge of the glacier and in to the ice grotto which is re-created every year. I love the luminous blue colour inside the ice. Then as the rain started to come down quite heavily, we dashed back to Eileen for another picnic inside, this time watching the clouds move around the mountain tops and the rain finally ease again.
Back on the hairpin bends we drove down to Gletsch and up the road to the Grimselpass. Unfortunately the clouds thickened and by the time we reached the top of the pass we couldn’t see more than 50metres in front of us.
It lifted momentarily, long enough to get a picture of one of the lakes at the top and then we continued down the other side at a very low speed, pulling over in the fog every time a vehicle came up behind.
As the road started to straighten out, we passed three men on unicycles heading up the pass!!! They must be crazy and we wished them a lot of luck !!!
At 4pm we finally pulled in to Camping Balmweid in the town of Meiringen, which is apparently connected to Sherlock Holmes. Rodney seems to remember that Sherlock and Moriarty both went over the Reichenbachfalls just up the road here. I assume this means that Mr Conan Doyle must have visited this town once…? Bet he didn’t have a campervan.