Ade was very keen to get back to Lauterbrunnen so we took a road trip with my cousin Jon and his friend Dean for two days. The day dawned fairly sunny – the best morning we had had so far in Switzerland, so it was a good day for some hiking in the mountains.
We took the scenic route, which took us through Staadt and not long after arriving at Lauterbrunnen, we headed up the Schilthorn, where they filmed the James Bond movie On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
Jungfrau was completely covered in cloud, while Schilthorn still had great views across the valley and to many of the surrounding mountains, but there were some early signs this was about to change.
The revolving restaurant provided a warm spot from which to have a hot chocolate and admire the various mountains. There was also a huge viewing platform so Ade was able to capture the mountains “on film” from every possible angle.
Unlike Jungfrau, however, which has ice caves, dog sledding and toboganning, there isn’t much else to do at Schilthorn unless you’re prepared to brave the long trek down – as we couldn’t work out where the path went to and watched as a person was rescued not long after setting out confidently on a trek down, I figure this was definitely not for the faint hearted – far easier to take the cable car back down!
On the way down we stopped at Murren and had a walk around, a very cute little town perched above the Lauterbrunnen Valley.
Lauterbrunnen is on the Busabout and Contiki tour group itineraries, so as you might expect it is a bit of a party town at night. The local pub plays host to people from all around the world and you can hear all about people’s daily adventures – skydiving, paragliding or just sight-seeing.
After a night “on the town” we slept in the following morning and then made our way out to Trummelbach Falls, we had been to the Falls last time we were in Lauterbrunnen, and as far as we could recall they were very impressive. Again they exceeded our expectations! The Falls are amazing – 10 glacier waterfalls falling through the inside of a mountain. The water comes from the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau, up to 20,000 litres of water per second is carried through the falls.
Hard for poor Adrian to photograph – aside from the rain, the falls throw out so much water that it’s difficult to keep the camera dry!
Once again, Lauterbrunnen didn’t disappoint – it was just as beautiful as we remembered, though, as with most of the places we’ve visited, far busier than we remembered.
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