Sunday in the sun

Today was a crowded day for the Lauterbrunnen valley. It might have been the busiest summer day we have seen in thirty years of visiting the area.

Yesterday, we played tennis in the morning but, otherwise, we were grounded by four months accumulation of domestic tasks. This morning, we were away for a fairly early start on the path to Lauterbrunnen and then on to Stechelberg, making the hotel at the end of the village our turn around point.

The car parks along the way were all packed and at the camping sites, there was not a spare pitch to be had. We stopped briefly at the cable car station; the queue to the entrance was fifty metres long.  We assumed this was for social distancing on the cable car, but as one car went overhead, it seemed full completely.

The world and his wife seemed to be in the valley. Well, not quite the world, as the car registrations showed most visitors to be Swiss, with German, Dutch and a few French number plates making up the numbers.

We headed back along the valley in the early afternoon. After a brief pit stop in Lauterbrunnen, we took the path to Wengen for a six hour round trip. Back in the village, it seemed quiet. The valley, so dark and cold in winter, comes into its own in the summer months. Surprisingly, this year seems to be no different.