Bern; Thursday, 16 August, 2007

After the glorious weather of yesterday, which had allowed me such spectacular views from the mountains, Thursday brought the payback; both in the torrential overnight downpours, and the peeling skin from where I had unwittingly got myself sunburnt. Looking out at the sky in the morning it was quite obvious that if I had gone up into the mountains today the main thing I would be looking at, apart from snow, would have been cloud!

After a leisurely breakfast, and an even more leisurely flip through the guidebooks I headed out to the station and for the second time out to Interlaken. However, on arrival this time instead of heading into the hills, I carried on, along the lakeside on the floor of the valley to Meiringen. The name of the town is not particularly famous to most people, though its nearby major attraction is world famous, if only for a fictitious event, for it is from the mighty Reichenbach falls, that topple to the valley floor just south of the town centre, that Sherlock Holms and his archenemy Dr Moriarty fell to their deaths. The fact that it is a work of fiction, and no such event actually took place in real life hasn’t stopped this small town cashing in.

I was originally going to head straight for the falls, and then come back into town, but my curiosity was tweaked by the Aarschlucht or Aare Gorge. I caught the small local train down to the end of the line at Interkirchen and on the way it passes the edge of the Aarschlucht. The river has gouged a deep, but narrow gorge through the rock creating an incredible natural sight. The train then dives into a tunnel that runs through one of the sides of the gorge, with a station almost at the end of the tunnel, access is through a door in the side of the cliff! I kept on the train for the final couple kilometre in Interkirchen and then started to walk back along the length of the route towards Meiringen.

There are four ways of passing from Interkirchen to Meiringen. One is to follow the road, up and over the top of the hills, one is to take the train back, the third (and not recommended) is to jump in the river and let it take you back (though this will almost certainly be fatal). The fourth, and most interesting way is to take the boardwalk that has been fastened to, and in places tunnelled through, the side of the gorge. The walk takes about 25 minutes, but the views as the gorge gradually narrows to not more than a meter of so wide are spectacular, and the sound of the water forcing its way through deafening.

From the end of the Aarschlucht it’s just over a kilometre to the base station of the Reichenbachfall Bahn. This Funicular takes about 5 minutes to climb to its top station, still a good hundred or so meters below the top of the falls, but by one of the higher pools that the upper part of the waterfall pours into. A further 25 minutes hike uphill and you reach the top of the falls, from where there are stunning views out over the countryside, you can see the valley that Meiringen lies in quite clearly laid out before you.

I descended (it’s only 15 minutes on the way down) back to the funicular station and caught that back down to Meiringen, and zipped across town in the hope of getting to the cable car in time to get up to the Alpen tower before the clouds completely covered the view, sadly, the clouds weren’t going to be the problem. It was already 4pm, and the last assent to the tower with return had already left (and I didn’t want the 3 hour hike back down to the station) so instead I headed back to the railway station to take the train back a couple of stops to Brienz to pick up the rack railway there to ascend up the 2350m to Rothorn. Once again I was beaten by the clock, arriving 5 minutes after the last round trip departure had left (and no option here for going up and walking back down!) Defeated, I waited for the next train back to Interlaken, where, on arrival, the skies absolutely opened.

In the end I had a 35 minute wait at Interlaken for the train back to Bern, and by the time I arrived back at the main station it was already 7pm, so I headed back to the hotel, dropped my stuff off and went out for dinner.