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And so, finally, I arrive in Lauterbrunnen, a village hemmed in on all sides by 600m high cliffs, enormous mountains and scores of waterfalls:

It was a bit disappointing arriving here by train… if only – IF ONLY! – I’d pushed on for another 12 days after I stepped foot into Switzerland, I would have been able to arrive here by foot having walked the entire way from Trieste. Regrets, regrets!

Lauterbrunnen is a superb base for day hikes, and if you hike up almost one vertical mile to the foot of the glaciers in the above photo, you can look back on the village at the bottom:

On a hot, clear, sunny day like today this is one of the best places to be in the world. For the rest of the time: when it rains, when it’s foggy or when it snows, be under no illusion: it’s crap!

I’ve been taking lots of photos on the hikes I’ve been doing but I’m not going to post them yet. For a start, most of them are so bad I could probably get a prize exhibit at the Tate Modern. But also, I have a friend coming over for a week and I figured I would hold back the photos incase the weather is bad when she gets here. Then I can amuse myself (and only myself) by saying things like: This is what you could have seen if it wasn’t raining. This is what you could have seen if it wasn’t foggy. This is what you could have seen if it wasnt stormy…!

I am now thinking about the next stage of my trip, which is to cycle from Perth to Sydney. Naomi – yes, I named my bicycle! – will arrive in Australia this week. I’ve been in touch with the shipping company and there’s a chance that they will hold Naomi to ransom! They insist on calling it import duty but to me: it’s a ransom. They hold Her. I pay. They release Her. Call it what you will: but it sounds like a ransom to me! She is less than 1 years old which is why there’s a problem. I figured I would buy Her as close to the departure date as possible so there was less chance of Her being stolen in England and traded for a syringe full of heroin.

Either way, I did expect this, but when they do slap an import duty on Her, it’s going to hurt. A lot.

She is also going to be subject to quarantine. “She might be DIRTY. She might have a DISEASE!” they tell me. “Where has she been? Where has she been ridden? Has she been around a bit?”. How disrespectful!?!

Naomi is a Thorn eXp which means nothing to anyone unless you’re into cycle touring or want to blow a fortune to see if you ARE into cycle touring like myself. When I first visited SJS Cycles down in Bridgwater, I ordered the Sherpa Expedition which was more than adequate for my needs. Then I pondered. Then I mused. I looked for excuses, for justification to buy The Beast That Is The eXp, and I couldn’t find any. So I stopped. And bought it anyway. Engineering is something you tend to equate with Germany, or Switzerland, but not with England. But this bike *IS* engineered. It’s a work of art.

On the grounds that shiny things attract magpies, and realizing that if it was good enough for Madonna it was good enough for me, I went for a black one:

A rather poor picture of Naomi without all the panniers. But still pornographic.

It’s fair to say I’m looking forward to the Australia leg of the trip. I can’t wait to get started! But if it rains a lot, I’m going to be very, very, VERY, gutted!

In Switzerland, all is good here! I might well stay here for another four weeks or so… the accommodation is cheap and the food nearby is good. Oh, yes, it’s GOOD! The Hotel Oberland here does what is perhaps the most arterially-destructive Rosti known to man: the Truckers Rosti. Hash brown. Cheese (lots of it). Minced beef (lots of it). Fried bacon. Oh, YEAH, BABY! Every night that I tuck into this life-shortening menace I promise I will improve my diet tomorrow. But it’s hikers food. It’s darn good. They even do an Oberland Rosti that throws in a fried egg as well for those who definitely NEVER want to save for a pension.

As they knock me out in the hospital in two years, Aged 35, to perform a quadrupal heart bypass, I will have fond memories of the time I spent here.

I’ll be in Lauterbrunnen for a while so updates might be few and far between for some time… tchau!

Yesterday, I woke up with that familiar “I overdone it yesterday on Oberrothorn” feeling. It isn’t sufficient for me to hike up high. I want to do it fast, but without running! So I tend to wake up the next day aching a bit. Regardless, for some reason, I decided to hike up to Gornergrat which at 3089m makes it a 1500m ascent from Zermatt. From Gornergrat you get a lot of views into the valley running alongside Zermatt including it’s glaciers.

On the way up to Gornergrat there’s lots of views of the Matterhorn. Like yesterday, this was a perfect day to be in the Alps:

There is a restaurant on the way up called Riffelberg which has this daft cow outside. And where I had some Apfelstrudel:

On the way up to Gornergrat you pass Riffelsee from where you can look into the valley that runs parallel to Zermatt. It’s full of glaciers, ice and other white nastiness:

Looking back from near Gornergrat you can see the hiking trails running off in all directions. You can also take an expensive train up to and down from Gornergrat if you’re a Hefty. I would rather spend my daily budget on Apfelstrudel:

From the top of Gornergrat you can look right down into the valley and across the the mountains on the other side. On the other side of those mountains is Italy where, I assume, the waymarking becomes “fascinating” again:

The descent from here back down into Zermatt took 3 hours or so via the Grunsee restaurant (Apfelstrudel available). On the way down, I noticed a cable car going up to Hohtalli which is 200m higher than Gornergrat but which I thought was closed:

Look carefully near the bottom left for the cable car… holy sh*t!

This morning I set off to hike up to Schwarzsee which is more or less right infront of the Matterhorn. But after an hour walking along the valley I realized I was too tired for another uber-hike, so I turned back and had a coffee at a restaurant… as I did, I realized there were Marmots running about all over the place! Out came the camera with zoom attached (for the first time on this trip). The sun was strong but here’s a few images anyway:

They live right under the ski lift in the field next to the restaurant so they aren’t afraid of the noise. But regardless of how quiet, and how slowly I approached them, I couldn’t get within 30 feet. When one of them gets scared they let out an ear-piercing shrill and any of the others nearby scarper too.

Although they look like hefty little buggers they are nimble and fast over the alpine terrain. You normally find them much higher up as they scarper away from you on the hiking paths.

Tomorrow is my last day in Zermatt, then I need to decide where to go next… l8r!