Moonshine - Part II

Mourtos

We left Kassiopi fairly early to try to get to Corfu Town where we'd arranged to meet the engineer as early as possible, so we were in the yacht club marina by 1030. The harbour master came along and told us we couldn't stay just for an hour as they only did daily rates, even for mechanical problems [are you noticing a theme here with harbour masters? We call it "being given the Foxtrot Oscar"] and the engineer didn't have the part yet and we didn't seem to have lost any more oil so we headed off to Mourtos. On route, we finally thought we might have some decent wind so we got the mainsail out, just as the wind decided to drop off. We left it out though and a while later I felt the wind getting up again, we got the headsail out as well and managed to get a decent hour in without the horrible chugging of the engine. Lovely sailing. Sadly the wind then turned right around so it was coming out of where we were headed and even more sadly we couldn't put the main away - it's an in-mast furling main and it just seemed to have jumped out of it's track at the foot. We decided to leave it out, hope the wind didn't get up any more and then try to put it away once we were in the lee of the island which might be called Sivota or might be called Mourtos.

It has been suggested that I might be something of a Jonah, but I disagree...

Finally got the main away by loosening the main halyard and pulling a lot and then managed to get the main halyard fouled around a winch retensioning it, mostly because we ignored my wife's suggestion to run it through a jammer to stop it from getting fouled. Oops! Job done, we headed onto the town quay and in an even more seamanlike fashion, got ourselves moored up.

A doggy ate my funnel

This was not at all funny! We'd topped up the petrol in the outboard in order to take the kids around the headland to a little sheltered beach, using the brand new funnel with a flexible and detachable tube on it that Ron had bought specially, very handy for filling up outboards when you're afloat. We'd left it on the quay so the sun could burn off the fuel remaining on it and off we went. We came back an hour or so later and whilst various crew members were having their showers Ron and I had an aperitif in the cockpit and lazily observed this extremely mangey dog wandering around. His fur was all matted and he had this horrible-looking lesion on his back. Then the damn mutt decides that our funnel is a chewie toy and runs off with it! I went to try and get it back, discovering in the process that the tube was detachable, so I had the main funnel bit but the mutt still had the rest. He loved it! As did the punters in the Bamboo Place, who were enjoying the entertainment and gave me a round of applause when I finally retrieved the now slightly-chewed tool. OK, maybe it was a little funny...

The Calm Before the Storm

I'd sort-of got the Navtex half working and we sort-of thought that maybe we'd received a weather warning for the following day of a storm getting up to force five or six. Not pleasant. The rumours seemed to be confirmed by our fellow yachties at Georgeos Taverna where we went for dinner that night, so we were a little concerned about our next stop. We'd planned on anchoring off Parga, which was only a short passage down the coast, which meant that we'd have plenty of time to provision the following morning before setting off. But Parga is quite exposed to the S / SE, which was where the forecast storm was due in from. I was talking up Gaios on Paxos, which is about the same distance (although further from Preveza) and beautiful and very sheltered.

Captain Ron woke me up at 0730 telling me "we'd better leave now"; I thought maybe the port police were after us, but it was actually because it was a fine looking morning and he'd decided to head for Preveza a day early and try to get in before the storm hit. On the way - about a 5 hour passage - I'd got fed up with the state of the decks so spend a couple of hours cleaning them, then I fitted the new toilet seat Ron had bought for the forrard heads, then I helmed a bit. By about 1000 the sea was getting up quite a bit, as was the wind, and it was looking like the storm was going to get us first. But as we neared Preveza and the lee of Levkas, it died down, the sun came out and we motored into Cleopatra Marina in a flat calm. They didn't have any diesel! So we filled up with water and headed back to the town quay where Claire and I (mostly Claire to be fair) cooked an amatriciana senza chili (it did have a pepper in it, which may have been a very mild chili or may not...) and we had a very nice local wine with it called... nope can't remember. Then bed.

The Storm After the Calm

Holy moly did that storm come in! I must confess to sleeping through it [but then again I slept through the Buncefield explosion when I was about half a mile away from it], but I did have an uncomfortable night - the motion of the ocean was nasty. We awoke the next day to rain, rain and more rain. It let up for about ten minutes at a time but it was basically all day. We were all very glad not to be slogging through it. So it was a sit around all day kind of a day. We read, identified leaky portholes, ate, I entered a few waypoints into the plotter, and we finally got around to hoisting the Jolly Roger that Sarah brought with her. Three metres by two metres and there was no way Ron was going to fly it at sea! The kids dressed up in their pirate costumes (and so did the grown-ups) and it attracted an awful lot of attention from locals and other yachties.

Sadly, the time finally arrived for our taxi back to the airport and back to Stuttgart and finally back home. I must say, following that horrible blow overnight, that I have the worst case of landsickness I ever had. I seriously keep missing the floor! Moonshine's a beauty and I can't wait to see her again.

Cheers again Uncle Ron!

Moonshine - Part I

No, I haven't got a new job running illicit alcohol. She's my Uncle Ron's yacht and we've just had a week visiting her in the Ionian along with my mother, my sister and her two kids. She's bloody lovely - a Bavaria 44, teak decks, twin helms, cockpit table, three cocktail cabinets, all the gear you might want (except an auto-helm and radar...); handles well under engine or sails, a little reluctant to reverse.

Getting There...

Wasn't easy. If you were planning to close a major motorway at a certain junction on a certain day, you'd probably post signs and notices well ahead of time and well ahead of the junction that's closed, wouldn't you? Well the Germans didn't. Junction 51 of the A5 was closed at noon on Saturday 18th September for 36 hours. The first to tell you this was after junction 52, which meant you didn't have a chance to change your route (the French A35 is just the other side of the Rhine and pretty much runs parallel) until it was too late! It took us four hours to go five kilometres which meant we missed our direct flight from Stuttgart to Preveza. Disheartened, we headed home to Basel whilst the UK-based contingent tried to come up with an alternative.

Getting There Part II

Leaving ourselves an extra four hours to get to the airport and having planned an alternative route up the A35 in France, we set off for a two-legger: Stuttgart to Thessaloniki on the mainland, transfer to a little internal flight back west to Corfu. Then maybe a ferry down to Preveza if we could or maybe the UK contingent would sail up to meet us. To be honest, I wasn't hopeful. Firstly that we'd get on the first flight but once we'd managed that I was pretty convinced that our bags would get lost in transit. As it turns out, it all went smoothly and we got ourselves checked into the Hotel Hermes with our bags in Corfu Town by about 1700 on the Sunday, having had about an hours sleep. But we were there, which is the main thing. Now we just had to figure out how to meet up with the rest of the crew...

Corfu Town

It's got a lot of history, has Corfu Town. When I've been there previously, it's been late arrival and then early away. So having a whole day or so to explore so was quite nice. Lots of little narrow streets with all kinds of little shops and quirks. They actually have a cricket club. We had dinner in a charming little place which I could probably never find again if I tried, the Taverna Pergola which I believe to be on Agias Sofias but you can never be sure... After dinner, bed, rest and looking forward to the next phase of the journey, meeting up with Moonshine.

Meeting Moonshine

Reports from the crew [as a little aside, this trip would have been completely impossible without the magic of cellular communications] were varied through the morning - weather leaving Preveza not great. Claire and I were poised to do one of three things: stay in Corfu Town; taxi to Kavos; or ferry to Parga or Gaios. Of the three, my favourite was to stay in Corfu although jumping on a ferry would've been exciting. In the end the weather cleared and Moonshine was heading to Kavos. So a taxi it was. After some negotiations with the driver (basically us refusing to pay more than 60 euros; I was happy to get on a bus for a tenth of the price) away we went. It turns out Kavos port isn't actually at Kavos, but at Levkimmi, about 3km up the coast so I'm glad we managed to communicate our needs. Amazingly, our cab pulled up at the dock just as Moonshine rounded the harbour mole. And then she promptly ran aground on an uncharted little sandbar probably thrown up by the tripper boats. I don't think I'm supposed to tell you about that. Ron got her off and we got tied up, got the bags aboard and decided that it wasn't very nice there so we should run up to Petriti, about an hour up the coast.

Sadly, it wasn't so easy. The wind was pushing us against the quay so I had the idea of pushing the bow off with the tender. Which needed inflating first. We hit the sandbar again. Tried again. Hit the sandbar again. Decided to wait til morning when hopefully the wind would be blowing the other way. Had a visit from the harbour master who told us we had to move because a boat was coming in there. Told him we'd tried and couldn't. He told us we had to. We told him we'd tried and couldn't. He told us we had to. The conversation went back and forth. I'm pretty sure he understood what we were saying, just didn't care and didn't want to help get us off. I suggested one last go, pushing the stern out with the tender instead, to show the git that we were stuck. We got off with no problems! Off to Petriti we went. Nice family meal in a taverna with no electricity.

Kassiopi

Our next port of call was Kassiopi, right at the north of the island. My sister was especially keen to go there as a friend she's known since she was five has settled there and runs a restaurant with her husband. We went via Corfu Town again, as Ron wanted to see what the marinas there are like - there are four or five of them; and then up to Gouvia Marina (the largest in Greece? Or is it the Med? It's HUGE!) as we'd be able to get diesel and water there. The queue for the fuel quay was five or six vessels so we decided to skip it and go in on the way back. It turns out that the reason for the long queue is it's about the only place in the Ionian that actually had any fuel - there was yet another strike on.

Into Kassiopi in a very seamanlike fashion and my sister was straight off to find Gaynor. Provisioning, chilling, maybe a couple of beers, hoisting Claire's Welsh flag and my Spurs flag and generally finally relaxing. It had been a somewhat stressful few days. Dinner aboard of a very nice rigatoni bolognese, the kids (6 and 9) volunteered to wash up but I got fed up of waiting for them as I wanted to get ashore and find a pub that had the Carling Cup game on. Wish I hadn't bothered now, of course!

Oil!

The plan for the next day was to head down to Mourtos / Sivota on the mainland. I call it Mourtos / Sivota because, whilst the Pilot book calls it Mourtos with an island off it called Sivota, the Imray chart seems to call it Sivota with an island called Mourtos. Anyway, we didn't go because Ron checked the dipstick in the engine and it was reading as empty. I looked in the bilge under the sump and there were two inches of oil in it. We were quite pleased that we had local knowledge handy in the shape of my sister's friend and her family. We were convinced it was a gasket, which would have been disastrous in terms of getting back to Preveza in time to fly home. The plan that was eventually concocted was to get rid of all the oil from the bilge and clean it up as best we could, shove another gallon or so in and see if it would stay in for an hour, then try running the engine for a while to see if that started it leaking again, then take a view if we could try to get down to Gouvia or Corfu where they might have parts. In the meantime Aki, a local engineer, came and had a look and didn't seem to hopeful, as did Gaynor's husband Tasso, who also brought along every hosepipe he could find and connected them up to the fishermen's water tap (cunningly hidden from the yachties under a manhole cover) so that we could finally top up with water (we'd been out since that morning).

Sarah took the kids off to the beach to get them ou tof our hair. Mum went off to do some shopping. It took about two hours to bail, then sponge, then finally mop up with kitchen roll the 5 litres of oil from the bilge. Not an easy job with about 4 inches of gap to get the "bailer" (a polystyrene cup) into. Interestingly, the engine is only supposed to hold 4 litres. Having done that, we added the oil and waited. It didn't go down. We ran the engine. A little dribble of oil appeared, in the area of the oil filter. Maybe that was it? We cleared it away and no more appeared. We decided to try and get a new filter from an engineer down in Corfu the following day, seeing how the leak progressed as we went.

After a well-earned, but not entirely cold, beer, Claire and I took the tender around to the beach to have a swim and play with the kids (and swill off the huge quantities of oil on my hands!). They were a little frightened of the sea at first but we managed to coax them in gradually and then we took them back to Moonshine, which they thoroughly enjoyed, while Sarah walked back.

We went to Gaynor and Tasso's restaurant, Strofilia, for dinner. Now, I've been to the Ionian a number of times (about 10?) and have had lots of very nice meals. This was the best meal I have ever had in Greece. I'm not saying this because it's run by friends. It was fantastic. My meatballs were served in the most delicious, meaty, tomato sauce and when I ordered the pork steak (my personal favourite Greek dish which I have at least three times a week when I'm out there), it was recommended to me that I try the pork steak marinated in honey and garlic. Out of this world! We all had something different, we all loved our food. Seriously, if you are ever in Kassiopi, go there.

So that takes us to Wednesday. I'll post the rest of the week later...

The Footie!

I'm pretty sure that our first visit to a game of football in Switzerland counts as an adventure. I was kind of expecting it be an FC Basel game rather than an international, but heigh-ho!

But first...

Haven't really been up to much the last week, but I did go to the Munster with Claire's friend who was visiting and this time climbed the tower. Everyone who visits Basel should be obliged to do this - it's 4CHF for adults, free for kids and it is hairy! Even if you don't have any problems with heights (I do, a bit, less so in a solid tower made of stone that I know has been standing for centuries than in a little fibreglass bubble on a wire), the stairs start out steep at the bottom and you have to contort your body to get around some of the woodwork and then as you get higher they turn into a very steep, narrow, "spiral" staircase [not that there's any such thing of course; they should be called helical staircases]. There are several stages to get up there so you have to walk around the outside of the tower a couple of times to get to the next staircase. It's about two hundred feet tall and offers a stunning view over Basel and its environs. Well worth the effort and the little bout of vertigo.

Joggeli (pron. "jockley")

On the 7th September 2010, the national football team of England played a Euro 2012 qualifier against Switzerland at St. Jakob-Park [in case you weren't aware] and we got tickets. Of course, we were sat in the home end so I didn't wear colours and celebrated our goals half-heartedly, which I was quite glad about when it started turning ugly when they got a guy sent off.

Lovely, modern stadium with a shopping centre built around it, but we did have a couple of issues. Firstly, the weather was AWFUL. Seriously, that was the worst weather I've seen in Basel. Secondly, getting into the stadium was ridiculous. For the whole of the D block, there was one gateway, maybe wide enough for ten people to get through at a time and no organisation outside at all. Plus they forced Claire and I to separate as the female entrance has women doing the body searches and the male, funnily enough, had blokes doing it. Claire did not enjoy that at all. It was lucky we got there as early as we did or we might have missed kick-off. Ludicrous! Similar problems occurred on leaving - there are no barriers or anything at the trams stops, so it was every man for himself trying to get on the trams. I'd be surprised if there weren't any injuries.

Inside, the stadium is well-organised - from the concourse you can see the game, which basically reduced the size of the queues at half-time as people didn't need to remain in their seats to see the game. If you can't be bothered to take your seat, there are TV screens all along the concourse as well. Unfortunately, we were in row two, right at the front and pitch level which does give you a different view of the game, so that was OK, but the guys in row one in front of us had decided that they didn't want to sit down at all during the game which meant we had to stand; the stewards had a word with them after about twenty minutes, which bucked them up a bit but we still had to stand up for the whole of the last twenty or so (once Shaqiri had scored that wonder goal).

All in all, a pretty positive experience. Looking forward to the Wales game in October now!

Sportnacht, the Klosterbergfest and the Black Forest

We had a very busy weekend at the end of August. No August Bank Holiday over here, so we had to fit it all into the regular weekend! Luckily, the good citizens of Basel helped us out by having a festival all weekend, combined with something called Sportnacht on the Saturday. All good fun.

Caipirinhas and Samba bands

On the Friday we went out to eat. Mexican at La Fonda. Excellent Burrito. So good, in fact, that we went there again on Tuesday. I think Mexican is my favourite style of food, at least until the next time I have Tapas! Fortified with grub, we headed for the festival. Lots of "lookie-lookie" stalls selling various ethnic bits and a gazillion outdoor bars. We wandered for a bit until we saw a big press of people and heard some live Brazilian music, ducked inside to get out of the rain and stayed for ages! Caipirinhas were a monumental 15CHF but very nice (read: strong), and you did get to keep your Klosterbergfest plastic beaker at the end of it.

This Klosterbergfest seems to be an annual charity event, full of all kinds of ethnic stalls and activities and the streets are thronging with people and music is in the air. Kind of like a very small Notting Hill carnival.

Sportnacht - Powerisers and Salsa

On Saturday from about 1700, Basel (or at least the bits of Basel that weren't Fest-ing) became overrun with various stalls set up by sporting organisations. Sportnacht. For 20CHF (although we got it for half-price from Claire's work) you get a wristband which entitles you to free transport around Basel (worth the money just for that) and allows you to try all these sports. I really fancied the bobsleigh but it seemed to be overrun by kids, and the unicycling ("einradfahre") but we didn't quite get around to it once I saw the Powerisers. I can't describe them, so above is a picture. They are very very cool. But Claire didn't get on with them too well. We had to queue for a hour in the rain to get a go but boy was it worth it!

Having done what I wanted to do, we next had to do what Claire wanted - a Salsa lesson. The fact that it was conducted in German didn't faze us one little bit and we were soon "ein, zwei, drei ... funf, sechs, sieben"-ing, twirling and generally getting a thoroughly good work-out. Much more enjoyable than I expected, and I'm pretty sure we'll be signing up for some lessons.

Salsa over, we headed back to the fest and got us some Paella and Sangria for dinner. Very nice! Massive prawns. Satruday evening was much nicer than Friday weather-wise, so there was much more going on. The was an African drum crew with dancers that we watched for a long time before heading into a little bit of Morocco, set up by the Marrakech restaurant. We had some very nice Maroccan tea - a bit of tea, a bit of mint, and a wasserpfeife, which was far more expensive than in Egypt or Turkey but very nice. Detemined to make the most of the pipe, we stayed there for quite a while and to be honest, by the time we left, intending to head for the Samba tent again, we were knackered and so just headed home instead.

Titisee!

On sunday we had a look at google maps for the black forest and I decided that we just had to go to a place called Titisee, for obvious reasons. We had some fun and games trying to get on the right road out of Basel but once we did it was plain sailing the whole way. The place was absolutely rammed with tourists and tut shops but it was very pleasant and we drove home on a German motorway (oh yeah, gotta love those German motorways!), at one point overtaking a big convoy of campervans which, we eventually noticed, all had these big stickers on them, saying they were part of a convoy that had gone Paris - Peking - Paris!! That's a lot of petrol!

Pretty shattered at the end of such an action-packed weekend. I think we might be taking it a bit easier next weekend...

Bibliophile

On a completely unrelated note; because I'd been doing so much typing this week brining the blog up to date, I was in a writing frame of mind so I've finally started actually typing my book! Still not much there, but it feels really good to have got started!

Into the 'Frau again

Sidebar - Saturday night at the movies

Interestingly or not, Baslers seem to love their cinema. There's about six or seven of them in town. Most movies are shown in English with German and French subtitles, but they do also have dubbed versions. We had an interesting time watching Iron Man 2 the other month as the Russian stuff that Mickey Rourke was speaking, which would have been subtitled in English back home, was only subtitled in German and French! Anyhow, I love the cinema and we go quite often and fairly recently we saw the third installment of the Twilight Saga - Eclipse, I think. The locals were very amused when Bella enforced her neutrality in the Cullen / Wolfboy pissing contest by saying "I'm Switzerland." However, that's not what I wanted to mention. As I said, the movies are subtitled into German and French so it's actually kind of useful for picking up the odd bit of language and, when Bella and her dad were having that conversation, we noticed that the translation of "I'm a virgin" is "ich bin jungfrau". Which is the point of this sidebar. I mean, I kind of assumed it just meant "young lady", but it appears not. So this little post is mostly about our going into the virgin again. I thank you.

Family matters

But first, there's a bit more preamble. Claire's sister and her family arrived on Saturday and then Claire worked Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, so there's a bit to talk about first. The weather had been terrible and it was still pretty dreary on the Sunday, so we took a walk into town and just wandered a bit along the river - I'd been hoping to take a Rhine ferry because I knew the boys would love that [I know I still haven't told you about those ferries, but I will, I promise!] but there had been sooo much rain that the river was too high and so they were all closed. So we wandered up towards St. Alban, where very excitingly the fire brigade were out clearing all this flotsam that had accumulated on some of the chains in the river, forming a great big damn. The lunatics were stood on the damn, in the river, poling stuff downstream. And then they brought out a chainsaw! We had to drag the kids away from it in the end. Strolled up to the old city wall section that's still standing and then went and took a look at the big water wheel at the paper museum (which was turning very fast) and had a beer or two in the cafe beside it. In the afternoon we walked down past the zoo, checking out the elephants and jumped on a number ten tram at Zoo for Dornach at the end of the line, where I'd been before and it's quite nice. Only problem was, my usually completely reliable sense of direction was all out of whack so we went the wrong way! Oops. Still, we didn't actually have anything we particularly wanted to see there, so we got off at the other end of the line where the sun was actually out and had another beer or two before coming back again.

Monday and Tuesday the visitors went off on their own - they climbed the Munster and went to the zoo whilst I mostly chilled. The zoo is apparently quite good. One night, we ate at Aeschenplatz (the restaurant is situated on the platz just underneath the "hammering man" thing and has the same name as the platz); a traditional Swiss place, very reasonable, superb food and wonderful service - they were especially good to the kids, bringing their food asap and then bringing them books and paper and pencils once they'd eaten. Highly recommended; probably the best restaurant we've eaten at since I got here.

Wednesday us boys went off to Dreilandereck, which was very cool, mostly because it was a working day so the port was in full action with massive cranes lifting stuff and barges coming in to dock and trains running and everything! [Girls just don't get it, do they? Dawn stayed back packing and stuff.] We met Dawn in Marktplatz where us grown-ups had a kalbsbratwurst mit brot und senf whilst the kids had hot-dogs from the excellent sausage stand there. Have I mentioned Swiss hotdogs, by the way? They don't split the bun down the middle; they impale it upon a spike, squirt in the ketchup and or mustard and then slide the dog on in there. Cool. A few last minute bits of shopping for the essentials: wine, beer and charcoal and we were ready to head off for the mountains again.

Hotel, motel, Holiday Inn?

None of the above. We'd hoped to get into the camping jungfrau again but they were fully booked so the only place available at Lauterbrunnen was, basically, a youth hostel. The Valley Hostel, to be precise. There were six of us in a four-bunk room and fortunately we didn't have any mystery guests the first night but we would for the following two. I called topsies even before either of the two boys! We'd planned a BBQ for the first night but let's say the weather wasn't conducive to grilling. We still had the sausages and things, but they were cooked in the very well-appointed kitchen facilities. Wine, more wine and then bed.

The following day, after breakfast, we headed for the train station at Lauterbrunnen and purchased four of those 200CHF six-day passes I mentioned before. It turns out that kids under the age of 16 (it might actually be 18) can get the same thing for 20CHF. Which is an absolute bargain! So it was a train up to Kleine Scheidegg, look at the Eiger and Jungfrau for a while; it was quite a cloudy day so it was very atmospheric up there. Then down the other side into Grindelwald, a spot of lunch in the Rendezvous restaurant about halfway between the train station and the cable car station, then up to Mannlichen on the four person cable car. Claire and I were lucky enough to go with the boys whilst mum and dad got a car all to themselves. Actually, it was pretty lucky that Eagle-Eye Owen was with us because he spotted what we thought was a beaver (actually a marmot) down on the ground there. Then it was the gigantic cable car down from Mannlichen into Wengen. Have I mentioned I'm not great with cable cars? And then a very pleasurable walk down into Lauterbrunnen from Wengen. I say pleasurable, but it was pretty steep going, nice views most of the way (it's route 58 on the wanderweg maps). There was an hilarious interlude when Claire picked up this big brown pine cone and threw it at the boys, shouting "giant slug!" Which of course then became a running theme all the way down. We rewarded our efforts with a couple of beers before heading back to the hostel, and then going out for Fondue; actually my first fondue since arriving in Switzerland. You know what, let's call a spade a spade here. It's cheese soup! That was also the sunset were the Jungfrau turned pink, which the not-fantastic photo at the top of this post tries to show.

Weather Witch

Next day was breakfast and sandwich making for our assault on First and Bachalpsee. Call me unimaginative if you like, but it's such a lovely walk and such a lovely place to get to, that I'd happily go there every weekend. It's right up there with High Street or the back way up Old Man Coniston as far as I'm concerned. We'd sussed the previous day that it's actually much quicker to get the cog to Wengen, then the Mannlichen gondola and then the cable car down to Grund on the other side than to go up to Kleine Scheidegg and back down on two seperate cog trains. So that's what we did. Sadly we weren't with old Eagle-Eyes so we missed out on about six marmot/beavers.

First cable car up to First, everyone got quite excited about maybe doing the Trotti-bikes, which are basically big scooters, from Bort back down. We saw a few people going down the First Fleuger, which is a big zip wire from First to the next cable car station. I sometimes think I fancy it and then I actually look at how far off the ground I'd be and think, "naaaah". From First, the walk up to Bachalpsee was as lovely as last time, although all the snow had gone and there were still some cloud floating around. When we were nearly at Bachalpsee, we met a wizened old lady who was clearly about 80 and out for her regular afternoon constitutional and told us to be careful - she didn't like the looks of the cloud above Bachalpsee. She might have been a weather witch...

Sarnies at Bachalpsee, which was a little chilly it must be said, followed by macaroons! Now I couldn't tell you how long it's been since I had macaroons but I am re-hooked on the things. A little taste of heaven. Back to First, damply pursued by the rain as predicted by the witch, onto the cable car at First, off again at Bort. We were going to go on the Trottis! Except there was noone manning the booth and a massive long queue and it started raining. So we nipped over the the cafe by Bort for a swift coffee and to see what happened to the rain. Whilst there, we worked out that we'd run out of time to do the Trottis, to much mithering and discombobulation. In fact, we'd nearly run out of time to get back to Lauterbrunnen!

In the cable car on the way down again, we worked out that we could get back to Lauterbrunnen via the Berner Oberlander Bahn. And that would be everyone's first go on a BOB, so it had to be done! We duly went down to Zweilutischen, where the train (8 cars long) would be continuing into Interlaken, while we would wait for a train back up to Lauterbrunnen. And then the coolest thing happened; the train from Lauterbrunnen met up with the train from Grindelwald and joined together into what we felt obliged to describe as a MEGABOB. Trains are very very cool. Back to the hostel again, possibly via a bar, and dinner. Schnitzels fresh from the butcher in Grindelwald. Be warned when schnitzel-cooking in hostels that don't have grills: they don't take long to fry!

Trotti Day!

Last day and we'd decided on two action items. Firstly, we wanted to get a good look at the big waterfall just behind Lauterbrunnen. Secondly, we wanted to go up the other side of the valley for a change, to Murren, and see how pretty it was there. Chris and I had come up with a third, secret objective, which was to get back down from Murren early enough that we'd be able to drive to Zweilutischen and then BOB to Grindelwald for the Trotti bikes from Bort. What we didn't realise at the time was that Saturday was the day of the Inferno Triathlon and half-marathon. For those who are click-averse, here are the facts:

• Swim: 3.1km


• Road bike: 97km (2.1km vertical)


• Mountain bike: 30km (1.1km vertical)


• Run: 25km (2.1km vertical)

Lunatics!
So there was plenty going on and the cable car up to Murren was very crowded. We walked halfway back, stopped for a very nice lunch and then got the train the rest of way back.

Yes, we were in time to get to Bort to do the Trotti bikes and yes they were worth the effort. They were tremendous fun, only hampered somewhat by some extremely nervous riders in front of us. If anyone ever asks you if you want to try some trotti bikes, your answer should be yes. They're cool. Seriously cool. End of.