We started off catching the 10:11 Ferry from Brunnen to Fluelen. I've wanted to go back to Fluelen ever since we past through two years ago. It had made a big impression on me, We had had to change from a coach onto a train at this point after our original train had been cancelled owing to a landslide. I remember the station being connected to the lake and at that precise point in time a steamer was leaving the harbour heading into the lake, which was a torquise colour with the mountains all around. I just had to go back. In addition the railway line has consent freight trains running up and down!
The boat trip was very pleasant if a little chilly sitting up the front, we moved to the back where we were out of the wind. The boat stops off at a number of points along the route, finally arriving at Fluelen at about 11:00. We had a hour before catching the next boat back. We had a walk around the small town, plenty of bars etc but no shops, we found a deli and brought some lunch, rolls, cheese and ham, I could use my new knife to cut up the cheese.
Whilst Beverley sat in the sun feeding the ducks I stood on the station and filmed the trains using my new monopod for the first time. I was not disappointed with my half hour on the station!
The next boat, which was a paddle steamer would take us to Vitznau where we would catch the Rigi Kulm rack railway. Again we alternated our position from front to back, felt a little conscious eating our own lunch on board but even Admiral's have to look after the francs in their pockets. This boat trip was almost two hours long, it was very nice, the views magnificent and the sun was shining.
The Rigi Kulm is not just a tourist rack railway it's a real working railway as well and to prove the point a cement mixer was being loaded onto a flat truck, I don't mean a cement mixer I mean one of those you get on the back of a lorry. Then a mini skip lorry was driven on to another flat truck, and I noticed on the way up concrete platforms next to the railway where farmers could load their churns onto the train. As we travelled up the mountain, which is over six thousand feet tall, there were quite a lot of building works, new apartments, restaurants etc for the winter sking I expect but all these sites were being served by the railway, it even looked as if they had built a special siding to serve the sites.
A Nun got on with a dog and supplies for the nunnery, got off and drove off in a 4x4. There was an Irish lady with a very demanding baby, well she had ginger hair, who was on the go all the time, exploring, grabbing, pulling, feeding and pinching, and the baby was not much better.
The trip to just below the summit took a little over half an hour, at the top you had an assortment of restaurants and shops and in this case a huge telecoms pylon. We walked up to the very top, the views were better than I expected, what I mean is that I thought it would be misty but it was not to bad, mainly hazy. These summits are so different to ours in England, they very manicured, nice paths laid out etc and you can walk in all directions of the compass, I know we came by train but there can't really be that much of an achievement in walking this peak as there's a path the entire way up and not much needed in the way of map reading!
On our decent we got off at Kaltbad First to catch the Cable Car down, big mistake it was rammed packed. The locals new what they were doing, they stood outside until it was time to leave and then jumped on, not only did they have a window view they were also next to the door for a quick getaway. Seriously, the cable car was packed tighter than my commuter train home, and the smell was not great too, but I expect I was contributing to that as much anyone else! On the plus side it only took 10 minutes and took us to Weggis another town we had not visited and another boarding port for the boat.
By now I was rather dehydrated so had to purchase a bottle of water, this cost SF3.50 from a kiosk on the lakeside, now that I do call expensive almost £3! We had a short wait for the boat which was the last one to Brunnen, it went a slightly different way visiting the end of the Statter See calling at Ennetburgen and Buochs. I think it was Ennetburgen which had a strange phenomena a river running into the lake which was higher than the lake, if you get what I mean, and I don't me a waterfall, the river was quite obviously running down hill into the lake.
As the boat called at the other stops Beckenried, Gersau and Treib most people got off until we were the last couple at the end of the boat, apart from a large Asian group, who at one point I thought were all going to fall in the lake as they sat on the handrail of the boat.
Arrived back at Brunnen at about 18:40, Beverley suggested that we did not go back to the B&B as we would most probably fall asleep so we made direct to a bar we had see the previous evening ordered a couple of Weiss beers, which went down a treat at SF6 each for 500cl. I also established they did food after an assortment of mimes and pigeon English. We ended up with a big pizza, chicken schnitzel in a bun and big bowl of fries - cost SF28 not bad at all.
To finish off the evening we caught the train to Zug, it was a five minutes late, shock horror. We had 30 minutes in Zug enough time to walk down to the lake sit on a bench for four minutes and take a couple of photos return to the station and buy a couple of coffees, again the train was a couple of minutes late on arrival. So you can't set your watch by the Swiss trains after all!
No comments:
Post a Comment