{"id":59,"date":"2008-06-18T18:06:34","date_gmt":"2008-06-18T18:06:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davstott.me.uk\/index.php\/2008\/06\/18\/aaagh-a-shadow\/"},"modified":"2008-07-02T13:07:03","modified_gmt":"2008-07-02T13:07:03","slug":"aaagh-a-shadow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davstott.me.uk\/index.php\/2008\/06\/18\/aaagh-a-shadow\/","title":{"rendered":"Aaagh! A shadow!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.everytrail.com\/view_trip.php?trip_id=27544\">Day 3 &#8211; Hotel Wetterhorn to Alpiglen at EveryTrail<\/a><iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.everytrail.com\/iframe2.php?trip_id=27544&#038;width=415&#038;height=300\" marginheight=0 marginwidth=0 frameborder=0 scrolling=no width=415 height=300><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Permission to act with surprise and alarm, Sir? Yep, our first day of proper weather.<\/p>\n<p>A reasonably lazy start to the day, we&#8217;d agreed to stick to the low, direct route today, so had an acceptable breakfast at half 8, carefully watched to make sure we didn&#8217;t nick it all for lunch, still dodging the flies.<\/p>\n<p>The walk down the valley into Grindelwald was utterly perfect, well, it would have been if my sore throat hadn&#8217;t erupted into full-on Man Cold. Still, the clouds lifted and the sun shone, got up past 25 C, which is where I usually start to feel useless.<br \/>\nThe walk was down wooded valleys, over streams and waterfalls,  with dappled light<br \/>\nand alpine huts in meadows looking out over snowcapped mountains.<\/p>\n<p>We got into Grindelwald to catch up with the weather forecast, still looks like today and tomorrow are our best chances, with it increasingly crap or uncertain after friday. I loaded up on Swiss drugs so the dequacane was safe from me, had a pint of very nice ice tea, then we set off walking.<\/p>\n<p>Trudging up the hill alongside the rather special BOB railway in the heat with packs and whilst full of a cold was a really special experience. It&#8217;s not often my inner voice shuts up completely, but even my internal lift music was muted whilst I walked. My legs were warmed up and, I think, enjoying the work. , , , . Was mentally very relaxing, should try writing a book on it, but I suspect it would be nothing but &#8220;this page intentionally left blank&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Again, the gadgety took the strain of &#8220;fsck me this is hard, how far have we come now?&#8221;. Navigation a non-issue, Swiss wanderwegs are perfectly signed.<\/p>\n<p>Got to the goal of the day, Brandegg and pretty much keeled over, although 10 mins rest and a Grun iced tea helped a lot. The BOB railway took me and the packs up to Alpiglen for a mere 5 CHF, where we checked into the guest house there. Very nice rooms, only 1 other resident so we got our pick. At this point my cold caught up with me and I just sat and dribbled for a bit looking out at the truly fantastic view whilst the others found a bit of shade to enjoy the wine and picnic we&#8217;d carried up.<\/p>\n<p>The view is worth describing, strong sunshine highlighting the snowy mountains, town in the valley, slight breeze, forests of pine up to the treeline. Even a small, distant avalanche. You can tell this is Switzerland because there&#8217;s also full 3G phone reception up here at 1608m and a train track.<\/p>\n<p>hopefully tomorrow will bring an early train ride up to Dr Evil&#8217;s secret underground lair at the Jungfraujoch, then onto Kleine Schidegg. It would have been along a nice ridge to Mannlichen, but that route was closed again yesterday. Bah. <\/p>\n<p>Dinner was simple, but good. Took nearly 20 minutes from ordering to the mains arriving, we all had a good mixed salad in that time too. Anybody would think we had our own private alpine restaurant with a view. Oh, the view. Eyesight has a wonderful built in zoom lens, but there were many things to look at in the view, and the view itself. We could see all we&#8217;d walked so far, more than managed at the time.  The evening&#8217;s entertainment was provided by the Eiger, which had many avalanches for our viewing pleasure.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not convinced that going up to 3454m is a terribly clever thing to do whilst feeling this crap, but I&#8217;m not missing it, even if I spend friday in a small dark room in Lauterbrunnen valley somewhere \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Day 3 &#8211; Hotel Wetterhorn to Alpiglen at EveryTrail Permission to act with surprise and alarm, Sir? Yep, our first day of proper weather. A reasonably lazy start to the day, we&#8217;d agreed to stick to the low, direct route today, so had an acceptable breakfast at half 8, carefully watched to make sure we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-postcards"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davstott.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davstott.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davstott.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davstott.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davstott.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davstott.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davstott.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davstott.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davstott.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}