Thursday, August 24, 2006

Trübsee hike

Today was supposed to be rainy all day, but when I woke up it was great weather, and so I leapt out of bed at the hotel, and raced home to wake David, and we took the gondolas up to Trübsee for another alpine adventure. I had never walked down from Trübsee before, though we have been around the lake, so it was another tick on the list of walks I wanted to do.

The sun was out sporadically after about an hour....... the walk took over 2 hours, and part was easy and part a bit more of a challenge. But then, our walks always seem to become challenging along the way!
The water was so blue and clear, and I did not go and feel it, but I am certain it would have been freezing. It is good to be able to spend some time with David, and we have some great chats while we are walking.

Here is a Swiss cow who is clearly used to posing. Most obliging. Just a little was along the path, there was a bath. As in one from the bathroom, sitting there, full of water! Fibreglass is perfect for a cattle trough, I suppose, if not all that aesthetically pleasing! It did make us laugh.


Here you can see down to the valley below Engelberg. For those of you who have been here, Grafenort is in the far distance. We took the path clearly marked to Engelberg, and it sort of arrived in a building site for a road for a while. Hmmm. We walked on and found the path again, heading steeply down the mountain, and it started raining as well. I was keeping a good eye on the clouds and the speed they move in the mountains, so we didn't stop for as rest on the way. When we got to the main road at the bottom, the trail we had walked down was marked closed for construction. There were no signs at the top, but it had red tape across and no-one was supposed to be on it. Oh well..... that is the sort of thing we usually find outselves doing! Oops. We survived. I am sure there must have been an easier track somewhere. We like a challenge though. Not intentionally, might I add.

At Untertrübsee, we hired trotti bikes, and zoomed down in the rain, past Gerschnialp to Engelberg, where we met Mum for lunch at Linie 8. Trotti bikes are like kids' scooters, but they come in adult sizes, and you wear a ridiculous little helmet, and can go very very fast downhill. They do have brakes. That is good as there are S bends all down the mountain, and then you get young kids flying past yelling "Achtung!!!" as they pass you. Quite demoralising, when you think you are going at the speed of light anyway. At least we didn't get so wet going fast.

I stayed on to help Marge for the afternoon, pricing things, and doing some quality control. And practicing my german some more. Now she is sawing and sanding, and I have got some coffee so I am going to be a slug for the rest of the evening. I will be back.

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