{"id":831,"date":"2012-07-06T20:16:53","date_gmt":"2012-07-06T19:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/?p=831"},"modified":"2025-11-23T06:11:29","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T06:11:29","slug":"mountain-passes-and-glaciers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/2012\/07\/06\/mountain-passes-and-glaciers\/","title":{"rendered":"Mountain Passes and Glaciers"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 Then we headed due east along the Rhone Valley towards Brig.\u00a0 About 5 kilometres out of Sierre we suddenly noticed that the roadside apricot stalls were no longer selling \u2018abricots\u2019, they were now selling \u2018aprikosen\u2019.\u00a0 Until this point,\u00a0all signage\u00a0was 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.\u00a0 I\u2019ve now added \u201cMein Gott\u201d to my exclamations and I really must stop saying \u201cLook at that\u201d just as Rodney is tackling a hair pin bend, because Rodney is threatening that one day he will look and we\u2019ll be over the edge in Eileen\u2026.!<\/p>\n

This area of the Rhone seems to be a very industrial area, but it is surrounded by lovely mountains.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"
North of Brig<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We stopped briefly in M\u00fcnster 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.\u00a0 Climate change has reduced the glacier back 2.5 kilometres since 1856 and even\u00a0since Rodney was last here, at the age of 6, the glacier face has moved further back over a ridge above the Hotel Belvedere.\u00a0 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\u00a0between Realp\u00a0and Oberwald, and as one was due in, we waited to watch it steam in to the station.\u00a0 Ah, I\u2019m trainspotting again\u2026..<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Dampfbahn Furka Bergstrecke<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Rhone Glacier<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We drove the road up towards the Furkapass, stopping short at the Hotel Belvedere, where we were surrounded by funny little sports cars called \u2018Caterhams\u2019.\u00a0 It seems they\u00a0had arrived\u00a0from all over Europe and were\u00a0having an annual gathering to \u2018play\u2019 with them on the passes and hairpin bends of Switzerland this year.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Rhone Glacier<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
In the ice cave on the Rhone Glacier<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.\u00a0 I love the luminous\u00a0blue colour inside the ice.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Looking down the Furkapass<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Back on the hairpin bends we drove down to Gletsch and up the road to the Grimselpass.\u00a0 Unfortunately the clouds thickened and by the time we reached the top of the pass we couldn\u2019t see more than 50metres in front of us.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Grimselpass<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

As the road started to straighten out, we passed\u00a0three men on unicycles heading up the pass!!!\u00a0 They must be crazy and\u00a0we wished them a lot of luck !!!<\/p>\n

At 4pm we finally pulled in to Camping Balmweid in the town of Meiringen, which is apparently connected to Sherlock Holmes.\u00a0 Rodney seems to remember that Sherlock and Moriarty both went over the Reichenbachfalls just up the road here.\u00a0 I assume this means that Mr Conan Doyle must have visited this town once\u2026?\u00a0 Bet he didn’t have a campervan.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 Then we headed due east along the Rhone Valley towards Brig.\u00a0 About 5 kilometres out of Sierre we suddenly noticed that the roadside apricot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8172,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions\/8172"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}