It’s now Thursday on my 2014 county trip to Switzerland and today we’re off to Reichenbach Falls and we’re going to return to Interlaken on a boat across the Brienzersee.
I’ve already covered Anita’s B&B, Monday in the Lauterbrunnen Valley, Tuesday at Our Chalet and Wednesday in Neuchâtel and Yverdon-les-Bains and now it’s Thursday and we’re out on another group trip in the minibus. When I lived in Switzerland, I only made two visits to the Oberland region and only to Schynige Platte and Kleine Scheidegg so a lot of this is new to me. The Falls are just outside the town of Meiringen, supposedly the birthplace of meringues. I wondered if I’d been through it on one of the scenic railways but it appears not, so all new.
You probably already know of the Sherlock Holmes thing. Author Arthur Conan-Doyle was tired of his detective, because it wasn’t the High Literature he wanted to be known for, so he killed him off in a short story called The Final Problem. Holmes was cast down Reichenbach Falls in a violent battle with Professor Moriarty but somehow managed to write a letter to Dr Watson detailing this as he was in the middle of it – I’d read the Sherlock Holmes stories before I went there but I hadn’t revised it and it must now have been ten years ago, I can’t remember the details. (the link there is to the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, which is the book this story is in and it’s an affiliate link to bookshop.org, so I get a couple of pennies and Jeff Bezos doesn’t.)
The Falls are accessed by a funny little one-carriage funicular railway – and guess what? We left at least two of the group sitting in the minibus. I just can’t get over coming all the way to Switzerland via a two-day minibus drive and then not going on the expeditions! Anyway, those of us who were actually engaging with the trip got in the little train and up we went to the bottom of the walls. I say “the bottom”. The bottom is surely in the river in the valley.
To be honest, I’m not quite sure where we went. To a ledge outside the little station where a long waterfall, the most striking bit of the Reichenbach Falls system, fell down a u-shaped cliff. That corner feels quite confined but if you look the other way, it’s like having a huge window onto the valley below and the mountains. This is very different to Lauterbrunnen. This isn’t a narrow steep-sided valley, it’s a wide one meandering between lower, more hump-shaped mountains.
I sort of feel like if it wasn’t for the great detective, the outside world would never know about Reichenbach Falls. It’s… fine. I’d absolutely do the trip up in the historic funicular and yay, there’s a nice waterfall at the top. But I can’t find anything interesting or special enough about the waterfall itself to justify it as an attraction in its own right.
We had quite a while up here – more than long enough to appreciate the waterfall. I imagine there was a cafe of some kind where my companions whiled away an hour or two. I, however, followed a path and found some more waterfalls.
My guess is that what I did was follow a hiking trail up to Zwirgi, which seems to be the summit of this particular mountain. As you get a level up from the viewing platform you start to see a building directly above the Falls. A hotel, perhaps, or a mountain restaurant. You walk through the woods and then suddenly you’re looking at a series of small cascades and plunge pools, in that opaque green-white that says glacial debris. They’re more wild and more fun than the big fall below – speaking of which, am I literally leaning over the very top of Reichenbach Falls here? Is this the very spot where Sherlock Holmes actually fell?
And you’re still getting views through the trees and through the crack in the mountain of the green, green valley below! Ok, come up here. See the famous waterfall but make the effort to hike further up.
I feel I have to explain another clothing decision here. The orange t-shirt that coordinates so well with my international necker is from Our Chalet. I think I wore it the entire week after buying it on Tuesday. The sunglasses… well, you could make them multifunctional by clipping various things into them, which is why they had to be so big. No, I didn’t realise at the time how ugly they were!
Down we went, another ride on the heritage funicular.
I think what happened next was that we were driven down to Brienz, the town at the western end of the Brienzersee, at the other end of which is Interlaken. We saw carved wooden statues and some people did a little shopping for miniature ones that would fit in suitcases and then – and at least this I’m definite on – we boarded a boat. Where did we go? Bönigen, I think, the town at the other end of the lake. I know I said Interlaken is at the other end of the lake and it is but it’s connected via a kind of canal, the same as it is to the Thunersee on the other side.
I love boat trips, especially on hot days when you don’t notice the sun is gently scorching you because of the breeze. Brienzersee is particularly interesting because of its colour, a rich opaque turquoise, a more saturated version of the cascades above the Reichenbach Falls. It’s from glacial meltwater from the Aare Glaciers, ultimately, with a hand from the Lütschine river which starts at the railway junction from Interlaken to either Grindelwald or Lauterbrunnen, one tributary of the river having carved each of those valleys.
I imagine my travelling companions found a nice seat and stayed put. I don’t stay put on boat trips. I like to roam, see the views from every angle, take photos of the flag flapping off the stern and do the “I’m the king of the world!!!” thing as close to the bow as I can get. A boat is too much of a joy not to fully appreciate.
As I said, we landed in Bönigen, I think. Our leader wanted us to see the sights, mostly of “her favourite chalet” which is just so traditional. And yes, it was. But so was the B&B we were staying in. I found another chalet somewhere that looked even older. Bönigen is on the Federal Inventory of Swiss Heritage Sites, which I thought accounted for it being on the day’s itinerary but it turns out pretty much all of Switzerland is on that list, including Neuchâtel, Interlaken and Meiringen.
Of course, the main reason was that we had to get off the boat somewhere so that our driver could pick us up and take us back to Lütschental, but Interlaken would have done just as well. Guess Bönigen was somewhere different, somewhere I hadn’t heard of or visited. We did stop for tea and cakes before we were picked up. There had been precious few opportunities for a nice cup of tea so far that day. I had lemonade, far more suited to the wiltingly hot weather than hot tea or coffee. However, I also probably had a drink with me – well, I was carrying a 45l backpack and it probably didn’t contain too many extra warm layers that day. Or was I? I assumed I was but there’s no bag in the selfies from the waterfall. Surely I took one? Left it in the minibus while we went up the mountain? I’m not the sort of person who goes out empty-handed but for my camera. Didn’t I at least have a wallet and a phone? And isn’t there a diary somewhere? I’m sure I took my tiny laptop because I remember watching the Holuhraun eruption start on it. And yet no. My travel diary stops in Borgarnes on July 31st and picks up again in Helsinki on October 28th. What did I do with the laptop every day in Switzerland in August then?
Coming next: Friday, our last real day, and another day off.