Last week Nick, Barley & I drove to Switzerland for a little camping holiday... Get ready for a lot of mountain photos!
It was an early 3:30am start and a very long day of driving but the beautiful views along the way made up for it. We took our time and made a fair few stops to let Barley out. Late on Monday evening we arrived in Geneva and found a campsite sitting on the edge of the lake.
Geneva was a classy looking town, full of designer shops and business people having nice looking lunches!
Nick had read about Camping Arolla whilst researching our trip, it's one of the highest campsites in Europe and I think my favourite from the week. It was so quite and peaceful with only a few other campers on site.
In the evening we walked up the mountain to the village and found a little ski hotel to watch the England match, safe to say the atmosphere wasn't the same as back home.
The following morning we hiked along the mountains surrounding Arolla. The view of snowy topped peaks was just breathtaking and a day I'll never forget. We walked through rivers and snow until we reached Cabane des Aiguilles Rouges, before heading down to stop at Lac Bleu and then back to Arolla through forests along the side of the mountain.
6 hours later we eventually made it back to our campsite, packed the tent up and drove to Bernese Alps. We found Campsite Holdrio which overlooked the village of Grindelwald. Nick had mentioned "this one is a little more basic". Turns out that was code for the showers and toilets are in a shipping container, which had a lovely beware of the wild fox sign on the door! It wasn't as bad as it looked and we really enjoyed our stay, even managing to rustle up some pretty impressive homemade chicken fajitas on a single camp stove!
Grindelwald was exactly how I had imagined a Swiss ski village with pretty, traditional, chalet style houses, decorated with intricate wood carvings and cowbells. We took a cable car up First mountain where you can do a mountain side cliff walk ending in a straight viewpoint strutting 45 meters out off the edge. Unfortunately the weather was not on our side that day and it was quite cloudy so we couldn't see very far, but it was still good fun!
As you can see Barley was not a big fan of the rain! However he did love our walk to Lake Bachalpsee and walking though the clouds was pretty awesome.
The following morning we got up early to tackle the famous Eiger Trail before starting our drive back into France. To do this you take a train from Grindelwald up to Eigergletscher. On a clear day you can apparently see climbers up against the rock face heading for the summit.
This waterfall was incredible, we followed it all the way down the mountain and thought it would make a pretty fun albeit highly dangerous waterslide!
Jumping over a melting snow with a river below!
As many of you may know when travelling in Europe with a dog they have to be wormed at least 24 hours before going back to the UK, so when we got back to Grindelwald we headed over to Interlaken to meet a Swedish Vet. However as soon as the door opened Barley had his bum to the floor and had to be dragged in. It turns out even in Switzerland he doesn't like a visit to the Vets. Fortunately the Vet in question was a nice guy and with some kind of tasty meat paste soon had Barley wagging his tail. After this we started on the long drive home, stopping in Bern for some lunch. We stayed in a campsite just outside Troyes before heading over to the Eurotunnel crossing the next morning. The trip was good fun but quite busy with a fair amount of driving. Barley especially seemed to take to becoming a camping/alpine dog as he insisted on getting back in our sleeping bag when we got home.