We flew from Heathrow to Geneva and then took the train to Berne, then changed and continued to Interlaken, changed again and went to Lauterbrunnen and finally caught the local train up the side of the Lauterbrunnen valley to Wengen. The village is situated on a sunny shelf just over 4000 feet above sea level, there are no cars allowed in the village and all transport is done using electric vehicles like golf carts and milk floats, as a result the village is very quiet and peaceful.
This first picture is the view from our balcony. The picture below is the Hotel Alpenrose where we stayed. It's the oldest hotel in the village (130 years) and has been owned by the same family since it was built. The wife of the current owner comes from just along the road from Nairn at Buckie, so we had a lot to talk about.
From Wengen it's a short trip across the valley and up to the pretty little village of Murren, and then a two stage cable car whisks you up to 9500 feet and the top of the Schilthorn. The restaurant may be familiar to some of you as it was used in the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
From the Schilthorn you get stunning views of the mountains of the Bernese Oberland, and in particular the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau.
The follwing picture is the notorious Eiger with the famous north face on the left in shade
A must do trip when staying in Wengen is to go up the Jungfrau. For this you take the train from Wengen up to Kleine Scheidegg and then get on the special train that climbs up inside the Eiger and eventually arrives at the col between the Monch and the Jungfrau and the highest railway station in europe at 11333 feet (3454 meters). On the way up the train makes 2 stops within the Eiger, the first is at the Eigerwand windows where you can look out from the north face of the Eiger and the second stop is at the Eismeer station that looks over the glacier on the south side of the mountain.
The first thing you notice when you reach the top is that the oxygen level is considerably lower and you have to move about rather slowly. The first thing we did having arrived at this loftly altitude was to visit the Ice Palace which is inside the permanent ice at the head of the glacier and it contains many wonderful ice carvings.
The Aletsch glacier is currently the longest in Europe and there are a number of activities taking place on the glacier, ranging from zip wire rides to tobogganing on inner tubes and people going ski touring. I limited my activities to a hike up the glacier to the Monchshutte which is the climbers hut used for the ascent of the Monch.
The hut is situated in a stunning location and the hike to reach it was probably just over a mile, but all uphill and I needed to stop every 50 or 60 steps in order to get my breath back. How those mountaineers who climb Everest without bottled oxygen manage, I do not know.
This next picture was taken at Kleine Schiedegg and shows the hotel used in the Clint Eastwood film The Eiger Sanction. Talking of the Eiger it takes most parties 2 or 3 days to climb the north face if the conditions are right, the day before we arrived a young Swiss climber, Dani Arnold set a new record and climbed it in 2 hours 28 minutes !!!!!! the TV footage I saw showed him virtually running up the face just using his 2 ice axes and crampons and no backup ropes - awesome.
The next 3 pictures were panoramas I tried stitching together and if you click on them they will open up and you can view them in more detail
Apart from going up mountains we also spent a lovely day visiting Interlaken and cruising on lake Thunsee and having lunch in Spiez
As you can see from the pictures, apart from the first day we had glorious weather the whole week and the mountains and meadows with the wild flowers all look stunning. I have been to Wengen a number of times skiing in the winter and I have to say it is one of the most beautiful places I have visited in the world and if you haven't been there you must try and go.
Between us Gill and I took over 600 hundred pictures, so what you've seen here is just a glimpse of a beautiful area.
As I've explained on my webpage blog www.briangwebster.co.uk I'm not entirely happy with the control I have over that page, so for the time being I'll continue to use this blogging site.
Please feel free to add any comments or thoughts.
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