Eiger and back

L started the day with a run, so early that it was still cold but the beautiful valley was deserted as sun caught the summit of the Jungfrau.  It was quiet apart from the rushing of the alpine stream. 

We had a decent shower and walked 20 minutes to the local Lauterbrunnen railway station for a train that would take us 80 per cent of the way up the Jungfrau, then back down in a circular route by train and 20 minute cable car. All that for 92 swiss francs each. 

The first leg was a very steep up to Kleine Scheidegg. The trains operate on a cogged track. We could look back down to Lauterbrunnen...

and up to the North Face of the Eiger.


Then there was another short train ride up to Eigergletscher, underneath the north face. We could have taken another train to the summit, for a huge sum of money, but it's all in a tunnel anyway plus  we had a magnificent summit yesterday. 


We spent quite a while drinking in the amazing views at Eigergletscher, had a coffee and our own sandwiches there, watched endless tours of Indian, Chinese and Russian groups - and this is the inbetween season (or 'mud' season due to the usual large amounts of rain - lucky us with no stop sunshine).


Then took the very long and spectacular cable car ride down to Grindelwald,

where we had another good view of the unbelievably steep north face of the Eiger.


It was difficult to find superlatives to describe the scenes we saw. 

From Grindelwald we took a final two trains back to our home station, Lauterbrunnen. There we had a cold drink and shopped for provisions. At last, the 20 minute walk back to the campsite, stopping on a bench for an ice cream. Brilliant day in this wonderful- in the full sense of the word- place. We feel so lucky that we picked this campsite, and that we expanded to 3 nights. It has been glorious.

Now it's  1930, post a van dinner of stir fry, the end of a superheated day. The outside temp drops quite quickly, it's 16 now, but in the van it's still 25! Probably cooking dinner didnt help.

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