Yesterday was an easy day - cleaning the house, doing washing, getting groceries down in the village, picking red currants and walking down from Itramen on the other side of the valley. Just a slow idle down the hill after getting the bus up. We then called at the Grindelwald Museum which is well worth a visit. It covers the history and life of the village, the glacier status, mountaineering and guiding, industry in the valley and a wonderful exhibition of black and white photography of the mountains. The clarity was amazing. In the evening the currants were cooked and strained ready to make red currant jelly the next day. Today was supposed to rain so we got organised for a trip to Thun. Then on checking the weather reports, the rain was going to arrive ... read more

Today is the last day of the YodelFest in Interlaken which was about singing groups throughout Switzerland and overseas competing against each other. In the Festival were also alphorn players, and folk music groups. The attendance was supposed to be 20,000 participants and attendees. The finale was to be the Grand Parade through Interlaken which we attended. When we arrived by train just before 2pm the streets were lined with people and participants were ready to leave Interlaken Ost through to Interlaken West. We went to the West Station and waited there for the parade to come through. It was magnificent. There were at least 4 brass bands throughout the parade, dozens of singing groups, groups of alphorn players plus the flag throwers. As well as the music, there was the William Tell Cast in costume, ... read more

Apart from some cloud settling around the mountains at a middle level, the day was fine so we walked down to Grund and got the cable car to Mannlichen. This is a longest cable way in Europe (not sure about the world). It takes 30 minutes to reach the top gliding over pastures, steep hills, forests and then high mountain pastures with many marmots. At the top is a 360 degree view of mountains towards Interlaken, to the east to Titless, then the mountains surrounding Grindelwald and the Lauterbrunnen valleys. It is spectacular and made all the more eerietoday by cloud swirling and lifting giving keyhole views over the valleys. From Mannlichen we walked the Panorama Trail to Kleine Scheidegg. This trail takes you face on to the Eiger with Grindelwald far in the distance below. ... read more

An early start to the day with a text from Brendan in the middle of the night (wanting to Skype) followed by a rooster crowing before dawn. What the heck, I may as well get up and check in with our son. I spent the next 2 hours checking email, Skyping, checking "Stuff" and doing the blog. We wanted to know the situation with the Christchurch Earthquake and B's house at New Brighton. It is uninhabitable now which means no tenants to pay the mortgage. A very bad situation for a single wage family. Today is the start of the next stage of the Tour de Suisse in Grindelwald so we headed down at 10am for the entertainment. There were plenty of "give aways" - hats, bags, drinks, key rings, pens, soft toys mascots and much ... read more

Mariann picked us up from the station at Interlaken Ost and drove us through to Frutigen. We had been here before when we walked across Switzerland and this was on our route through to Adelboden. Mariann had heard about the place called Tropenhaus Frutigen but never been there and here was her opportunity to visit. In a way it is a strange place because the warm water from the Lotschberg Base Tunnel is piped to Frutigen and first used to cultivate tropical plants in a huge glass house and warm water fish in large ponds before being fed back into the water table. A large amount of water was required for Switzerland's first sturgeon farm for caviar and this is the way they engineered it. Amazing and typically Swiss in finding ways to use their natural ... read more