Lovely rural architecture at Ballenberg open air museum; the famous Reichenbach Falls at Meiringen and a Sherlock Holmes Museum; beautiful Rosenlaui - a quirky hotel surrounded by mountains with Gertrude Bell connections.
Ballenberg, just to the east of Lake Brienz, is an extensive open air museum with examples of the regional traditional rural architecture. It is a really nice place to wander around and has produce gardens, lots of demos of local crafts and skills - spinning, woodworking, weaving and pottery the day we were there - and many events like folk dancing and craft markets.
Ballenberg website has a lot of information on the buildings and events.
A farmhouse from Bonderlen/Adelboden was the first to be erected at Ballenberg. It was built in 1698 and an inscription on the building tells 77 year old Thomas Gyger and his 71 year old wife had the carpenter Jakob Pieren erect it. The wood was white when first cut and darkened to the colour it is now under centuries of weathering.
We visited in October 2009, a long drive from Basel but we enjoyed the visit, and bought fresh-baked bread and excellent chocolate to bring home.
Ballenberg is located in a beautiful setting, fittingly rural and surrounded by mountains.
Skiing above Meiringen, February 2008.
Meiringen, about 10km south east of Ballenberg, is the famous location of the Reichenbach Falls where, in The Final Problem, first published in Strand Magazine in December 1893, Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty fought and fell above the waterfall.
Conan Doyle had come to hate his most famous creation and lamented the fact that his many other achievements, most of which he rated more highly, were virtually unknown.
However, the public - and the publishers - wouldn't let him rest until Holmes was resurrected, first in The Hound of the Baskervilles, a retrospective tale, then finally brought fully back to life in The Empty House in 1903.
The town makes much of the Holmesian connection with a rather nice small museum where there is a recreation of his sitting room at 221b Baker Street, London.
In September 2013 we climbed past the falls once more, on the way to Rosenlaui.
Meiringen's second claim to fame is as the birthplace of the meringue!
In September 2013 we hiked across the mountain from Meiringen to Rosenlaui, to stay in the iconic hotel. It is possible to use the Post Bus - a great Swiss institution for travel in the mountains - but we wanted to arrive on foot.
The hotel holds several attractions for us. First and foremost Gertrude Bell stayed here, in particular in 1901 when she climbed several peaks in the Engelhörner range, including one which was named Gertrudspitze in her honour.
In August 1901 she wrote1 to her stepmother Florence Bell from the Kurhaus, Rosenlaui - the Hotel Rosenlaui:
"I am established for a day or two in this enchanting spot, having been driven out of the higher mountains by a heavy snowfall on Monday, which renders the big things impossible for a day or two. Here, there is a fascinating little rock range, which can be done in almost any weather."
Secondly, the hotel has changed very little from that time. There are no en suite rooms, for instance, and dining is a set meal.
We took the train to Meiringen then the Post Bus to the Reichenbach Falls lower station for the funicular up to the falls then walked to the Zwingli Hof, quite steep, for sausage, chips and a beer before setting out for Rosenlaui - from here it took just under two hours. Steep for a while to begin with then not too bad.
It is a beautiful walk and we had good weather for it, sunny but mostly overcast so not too hot.
The original hotel was built in 1771 but was rebuilt in 1862 after it burned down. A Belle Epoque attached hotel was built in 1905. The hotel has no tvs, radio or Internet connection and limited mobile phone reception.
At the hotel we had a room on the top floor with a great view of the mountains, plain but very clean.
We were quite early so decided to take a walk to the Gletscherschluct, a gradually ascending path through the Rosenlaui Gorge.
The river is a torrent through the gorge and there had been a lot of rain the previous week so it was going at full pelt.
The further we got into the gorge the narrower and darker it became and the noise of the water thunderous.
We returned to the hotel for a well-deserved rest before dinner which was very good - an excellent white wine soup, pumpkin crostini which neither of us were keen on, but a return to form with a great beef stroganoff and panna cotta with intense raspberry sauce.
Sadly we did not have the greatest night's sleep - the bed was very hard, pillows too soft and the river crashing over rocks just outside the hotel was extremely loud.
Breakfast was great though - fresh strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, breads and rolls and home-made jam and hot coffee.
As we didn't have to check out before 11 we went for a walk to get decent views of Gertrudspitze, first keeping to the road west then to Schwartzwaldalp where the mountain was very clear.
It was still very early so there was mist in the valleys and sun only on the mountain tops.
Gertrude Bell is best known for her role in the Middle East during and after the end of the First World War. She had already travelled extensively in the region and developed an interest in archaeology, visiting ruins and digs such as Carchemish where she first encountered T.E. Lawrence.
Before this period of her life, though, she had become an accomplished mountaineer, particularly in the Bernese Oberland.
In September 1901 in a letter1 to her father she wrote a detailed account of her traverse of the Engelhorn with her two guides, Ulrich and Heinrich Fuhrer, including a terrifying section achieved on each others shoulders:
"... we were on an awfully steep place under the overhanging place. Ulrich tried it on Heinrich's shoulder and could not reach any hold. I then clambered up on to Heinrich, Ulrich stood on me and fingered up the rock as far as he could. It wasn't high enough. I lifted myself still a little higher - always with Ulrich on me, mind! - and he began to raise himself by his hands. As his foot left my shoulder I put up a hand straightened out my arm and made a ledge for him. He called out, 'I don't feel at all safe - if you move we are all killed.' I said, 'All right, I can stand here for a week,' and up he went by my shoulder and my hand. It was just high enough."
Later Ulrich told Gertrude that if she'd said she hadn't felt safe he would have fallen, at which Gertrude admitted that, actually, "I thought I was falling when I spoke"!
At the end of the letter to her father she wrote of her time here:
"Seven new peaks - one of them first-class and four others very good. One new saddle, also first-class.
The traverse of the Engelhorn, also new and first-class.
That's not bad going, is it!...."