I’ve Been Expecting You, Mr Bond

Alpine horn for the tourists at Schilthorn: cut-out of James
Bond disguised as Sir Hilary Bray lurks behind!

A week by train in the Bernese Oberland

Ever since our first visit to the Alps five years ago we have wanted to return to visit some places we had not then had time to see. I had begun to think about spending a week at, say, Interlaken, which would enable us to trip out to The Schilthorn and Jungfraujoch plus any other places that might come to mind, and when I opened my latest Great Rail Journeys catalogue I saw the Inclusive Jungfrau tour which provided all that we needed and more, with seven nights in Grindelwald (and, bonus, a night in Colmar on the way there, a place we had wanted to revisit after a short stop there on a previous trip). A visit to Jungfraujoch was included, as well as visits to Röthorn and Schynige Platte, and there were two free days on one of which we could arrange to visit Schilthorn, so we simply booked the Great Rail Journeys package, with a night in London before departure, and waited for the date to come!

It was an early start from London St Pancras International so we did not have breakfast at our hotel but went straight to meet our tour manager Stephen at the Great Rail Journeys office at the station. Once through check-in we had coffee while we waited for our train to Paris, and then enjoyed the light breakfast served on the train (as usual we were travelling Standard Premier Class, with a light meal included). There was supposed to be a coach transfer from Paris Nord to Paris Est but it was a tight connection and an easy walk so Stephen decided it would be quicker simply to walk between the stations rather than find the coach, load the luggage, struggle through traffic and unload the luggage again, so we had a little exercise between stations in Paris before continuing by TGV to Colmar.

At Colmar the weather was almost as hot and sunny as on our previous visit, but we had both the evening and the following morning to enjoy this delightful little city, well worth seeing. And I am pleased to say that the Grand Hotel Bristol, conveniently opposite the station, was much improved on our previous visit.

We left Colmar earlier than planned so as to travel on a TGV straight through to Basel where we changed trains for Interlaken. Because we had started early we had a couple of hours at Basel and as well as enjoying coffee under the trees at a pleasant pavement café also had a walk though the city centre to a river bridge, a bakery supplying our needs for lunch.

From Basel we took a train through to Interlaken where we connected to a mountain railway train to Grindelwald, at the foot of the Eiger. We stayed with the rest of the group (forty including the manager, the biggest group with which we’d ever travelled) at the Romantik Hotel Schweizerhof, and I would recommend it to anyone. Our room was huge and stylish, reminiscent of a James Bond film set! We had a view of the Eiger through our patio window, a walk-in wardrobe, double bath (!) and separate shower and a control panel for lighting and window shutter that took a few minutes to learn! We were going to be there for a week so we unpacked and made ourselves at home.

Unlike any previous Great Rail Journeys tour we had done, we were supplied with a packed lunch each day by the hotel, so days out did not have to include a search for lunch; and after dinner, sleep and breakfast we picked up our little paper carrier bags and made our way through the village centre to the cable car station for first exciting excursion, to Grindelwald First. For me this was a bit of a test run: the planned trip to Schilthorn would involve several cable cars, many of them very high above the ground and very long, so this little trip to First would reveal how comfortable I would be with cable car travel. Fortunately it was fine, although in terms of the experience itself it was disappointing that there was dense fog - or cloud if you prefer - nearly all the way up. There was not a lot to see from the peak, either, but we did do the Cliff Walk around it even though the scenery was nowhere to be seen, and we enjoyed coffee before travelling back down to the village, eating our lunch in the cable car on the way. In the afternoon we discovered the local church and the local museum and browsed around these. Dinner at the hotel and bed, ready for the first Big Day tomorrow!

Approaching Schilthorn by cable car

"Tomorrow" was Day 4, Friday, the first of two free days, and we had planned that if the weather was suitable we would visit Schilthorn, one of the highest peaks in the region and from which great views could be had (in suitable weather) and which appeared as "Piz Gloria" in the James Bond film, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." After taking invaluable advice from our Tour Manager we set off for Grindelwald station and bought our travel tickets for the day, out via Kleine Scheidegg and Stechelberg and return via Mürren and the short route via Zweilütschinen. All we needed was three tickets, all of which we were able to buy at the station using our half-fare passes supplied as part of our holiday package.

The view from the terrace

We set off on the next train to Kleine Scheidegg and changed trains there for Lauterbrunnen. We had been this way five years ago in winter and it was interesting to see it in June: not much different, really! Once we had climbed out of the valley from Grindelwald there was still plenty of snow until we descended the other side through Wengen to Lauterbrunnen, where we caught the connecting bus to the cable car terminal at Stechelberg. Here we started the long climb to Schilthorn. There were three changes of cable car on the way and each time we just had a few minutes walk, with a huge crowd of other people, and then continued onto the next stage. One change was at Mürren where would be leaving the cable car on our way back. The views on the climb were great, but nothing compared with what awaited us at the top. From Schilthorn it seemed that we could see most of Switzerland! We could certainly see the Jura mountains in the northwest (which we had visited twice on other occasions), and Mont Blanc in France to the southwest, and the huge stretch of the midlands plain looking north and east. The great bulk of the Eiger and Jungfrau hid the southeast from our view. It was said that you could see the Matterhorn from here but that did elude me. It was a very slightly misty day, but not far from perfect for the panoramic view.

Looking down on the 007 walk of discovery - a bit
snowbound for us

We ventured into the revolving restaurant which had been the set for Blofeld's base in the film, but we did not eat there, having our packed lunch from the hotel. Beneath was a number of 007-related displays which we visited but which were not the reason for our visit - although without the finance from the film the restaurant might never have been completed and the cable cars would not have survived so we would never have been able to visit at all! I am a bit of a fan of the film, actually, as it is one of those which fairly closely follows the book (apart from having Bond drive an Aston Martin instead of his Bentley).

Going back down we were bogged down in the crowds and twice had to wait half-an-hour for cable cars, but this cannot be helped if we visit a popular place on one of the the few days with good weather! We left the cable car at Mürren and walked through this cliff-top village to the rail station at the other end. On the way we visited a gift shop where we bought our souvenir (a gift for ourselves!) for the holiday, a fondue set - quite reasonable prices, unusual for Swiss resorts. We boarded the train and travelled to the other end of the line at Grutschalp where a waiting cable car took us down the cliff to Lauterbrunnen. From there we returned to Grindelwald by the shortest rail route for a shower, change of clothes and dinner with the rest of the group. I was hailed by one of the men, "I've been expecting you, Mr Bond:" four of the group had been behind us in the cable car queue on the way down, but we had not spotted them!

The train stops at a viewpoint on its way up
through the Eiger

On the Saturday was the inclusive trip to Jungfraujoch on the famous Jungfrau railway which actually climbs up through the Mönch and (the north face of!) the Eiger, to the highest railway station in Europe. Again there were lots of people (and we actually met a young couple who had been beside us in a cable-car queue the day before!) but this time we had group reservations on the trains so there was no problem with travel. We began with the train to Kleine Scheidegg again and this time crossed to the Jungfraujoch platform to the dedicated group travel area from where we were escorted to our carriage. Only the first part of the journey is in the open air, and all of it climbs steeply; soon were we in the tunnel and then the train stopped at an intermediate station for five minutes, the sole purpose of which was for us all to leave the train and look out through windows cut into the rock of the mountainside. (If you look at the north face when the sun is low and shining in an appropriate direction you can see the light glinting off these windows).

The view from the terrace of the
High Alpine Research Station

Back on the train we climbed up to the underground station at the "Top of Europe" and made our way through the pedestrian tunnels into a large sunlit space with a gift shop, coffee bar and the start of a suggested tour through all that the Jungfraujoch had to offer. Unfortunately a panorama viewpoint was closed for improvement work (indeed the station was full of contractor's plant as well, so we did not have the best introduction as we left our train, but there is not much space up there!). There were active things to do outside, but for me the main point was the view across Switzerland once again. We tried to see the Schilthorn where we had been the previous day, but cloud kept intervening and we never did see it. The view down over the Aletsch Glacier, still covered in snow, was breathtaking.

Aletsch Glacier

Speaking of which, we had to move slowly and carefully at these altitudes with thin air! No rushing about possible. There was an "ice palace" with sculptures made of ice - incredibly difficult to photograph - and much else to occupy our time until it was time to gather and make our way slowly to our train back down. Only in Switzerland have I ever experienced altitude ear-popping on a slow train!

From Kleine Scheidegg we went back to Grindelwald and dinner. Day 5 had come to an end, and with it the sunny weather. The rest of our time was to be murky and damp, but still exciting and rewarding.

The locomotives on the Brienz-Rothorn line are angled to
keep their boilers horizontal on the steep gradient

Sunday was the Feast of Pentecost and was a public holiday along with the Monday after it, but the tourist attractions were still open, although many shops were closed. Yet another mountain ascent awaited us, although this time the train itself was part of the attraction, for it was steam-powered and climber steeply up from its terminus opposite the main station at Brienz to the top of the Rothorn. We had to travel to Brienz via a change of train at Interlaken, following the coast of Lake Brienz. After a short wait we took our reserved seats on the Brienz-Rothorn train and were pushed up the steep gradient by a powerful little locomotive that made a great deal of noise with each exhaust blast. I had experienced nothing quite like it in all my years of train travel (going back to the days when steam trains were normal).

Again we climbed up to where there was still snow. The snow was staying longer this year than usual and many normally-open walking routes were still closed - this is June - and some mountain railways only started operation this week. From the peak we could look down on the line and see other little trains making this way up and down. It was cold and damp and many of us went down on an earlier train than the one booked because walking was limited and the views restricted by the mist and rain.

We were among the "advance party" on an early train back and so had an hour to spare in Brienz, where we walked along the promenade on the lakeside, then up through the town and past the shops - grateful that it was a Sunday and we could not spend any money! Amazingly both the greengrocer and a hardware shop had wares on display outside with no worry about theft. This is an amazingly honest part of the world. The town was preparing for a yodelling festival, but we would be long gone before it began.

The day out ended with a cruise along Lake Brienz from the mooring by the rail station in the town where we met those who had stayed the course at the mountain-top. Our Tour Manager had been given a free upgrade to First Class for us all on the lake steamer, and so we sat on the upper deck (under cover!) and enjoyed a glass of sparkling wine - pushing the boat out, as they say, at Swiss prices - as we travelled in style back to Interlaken Ost for the train home to Grindelwald. It had been a really great day out in spite of the cold and rain at the mountain-top. I would not have wanted to miss the train ride up there nor the views when we could see them, and it was not so cold or wet down by the lake.

The train at its mountain terminus

 On the Monday came our last mountain railway of the holiday. I don't think I've ever travelled on so many, or such odd, railways in one holiday before. We began by travelling towards Interlaken again but this time leaving the train at Wilderswil, just outside Interlaken, to take the mountain railway to Schynige Platte. Like the train to Rothorn, this one had trains of just two coaches pushed up the hill by a locomotive in the rear, but this time they were electric locomotives and considerably quieter. They were antiques nonetheless and the ride was amazing.

The Alpine Garden

Schynige Platte is worth visiting for itself, as well as for the views from the top. We could only see well for the first ten minutes after leaving the train, and this was the first time I had been able to study the territory in which we had been staying for a week and which I had visited five year before on a day trip. We could see the valleys of the two branches of the river which come together at Zweilütschinen, each with a high cliff along each side. On the high plain between them sat Kleine Scheidegg and Manlichen and on the west clifftop was Mürren; beyond the cliffs on either side and in the distance beyond the plain were the enormous mountains that surround the whole Jungfrau region which we had been exploring on this fantastic holiday.

Looking back up the valley

There are many walks available from the station around the mountain top, but again with little to see and a cold rain we decided not to wander far and spent our time looking at the Alpine Garden and its little exhibition before going back down on an earlier train and then travelling back to Grindelwald the long way round via Lauterbrunnen and Kleine Scheidegg, back in time for dinner. It was so misty that at Kleine Scheidegg as we changed trains we could not see the Eiger!

A Neuchâtelois farmhouse at Freilichtmuseum Ballenberg

The next day, Tuesday, was our last complete day in Switzerland and was a free day. We had no agenda for the day when we set off from England, but while in Brienz we had found out about an open-air museum not far away at Ballenberg which had a collection of about a hundred historic buildings re-erected there from various parts of the country when their removal was required. The two areas we are most interested in, Neuchâtel and and Graubünden Cantons, were not well represented, but it still sounded like and interesting place to visit and so in the morning we set off once more for Grindelwald station. Again, they were able to sell us tickets for the whole day, including vouchers for entry to the museum at a reduced price for train travellers; the travel tickets included the bus from Brienz to Ballenberg and back and well as the train to Brienz via the change at Interlaken Ost. It is all so much simpler in Switzerland than at home: even though a variety of public and private bodies provide the transport it operates as one system so changing to bus or cable car is exactly like changing trains, with through tickets available.

Although a free day, the hotel still provided the packed lunch again and we ate ours during our time at the museum, which was like a long country walk punctuated by visiting the old buildings, some of which were just as they had come, some restored extensively, and some re-purposed to display artefacts or bygone ways of life, crafts etc.. The rain came and went, but we had a great day before taking the bus back to Brienz then the trains "home" in time to shower and change before our last dinner at the hotel. Back to our splendid room to pack ready for the morning's (fairly) early start, for we were returning to London in one day.

International trains at Paris Nord

LNER "Azuma" at London Kings Cross

The trip back via Paris went well apart from a twenty-minute delay to our Eurostar to London: it came in late and left late, and the carriage numbers were wrong, too, so staff had to redirect us to the right part of the train - chaos but once aboard it was a good trip with the usual light meal. We had booked a hotel room in London for the night just in case we were late and could not get the last train to connect for Stamford at Peterborough, but on reflection it would have been cheaper to take a taxi from Peterborough than to stay overnight in London! However, staying did mean that we had an opportunity to visit family in London for a good part of the day before travelling home at our own convenience, having the flexible tickets which Great Rail Journeys had provided for us. Icing on the cake was that our train to Peterborough was one of LNER's new class 800 "Azuma" sets which it was nice to try; our first class 800 ride.

Climbing the Swiss Alps - part 1: From London to Matterhorn and Eiger

The agenda for our rail adventures has always included a Great Rail Journeys accompanied tour to Switzerland to take in at least the famous Glacier Express and Bernina Express, and we had always assumed that this would be a retirement project. In 2012 I had seen advertised the very trip that would provide all we wanted to do in the Swiss Alps in one tour, and in winter when the snow would enhance the scenery: further I had almost saved up enough money to fund the trip and if we waited for the following winter, if it were still available, it would make a good way to celebrate my next round birthday. When the dates for 2014 were published one of the options coincided with a Lincolnshire school holiday just a few weeks after the relevant birthday, so we brought the project forward by several years and made the First Class Glacier Express in Winter holiday package my 60^th birthday railtour!

Hotel lobby in former station cab road

Like all these packages, it began at London St Pancras International and we decided to travel to London the day before departure and spend a night there to extend the holiday and ensure that there would be no worry about catching the first train of the tour. It happened that the day before the tour was St Valentine's Day, and one of my birthday presents was a night at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, where I also booked dinner that night, so it all worked together very nicely to start the holiday in style and with some unhurried time for each other before setting off on the adventure. Great Rail Journeys booked decently-priced First Class tickets for us to and from London as well as all the essential travel and most of the meals throughout the tour itself.

View from our table in the hotel restaurant

The Renaissance Hotel is in the thoroughly rebuilt hotel/offices and former station buildings right beside the international platforms at St Pancras station and the restaurant where we had dinner and breakfast is in the former booking hall. It is a spectacular place in itself and well worth a visit: the bar and restaurant is open to non-residents.

After checking out of the hotel we made our way to meet out our tour manager, Glyn, by the Eurostar check-in gates and met some of our companions for the coming week. We were certainly among the youngest members of the group, and even though it was a school holiday there were no families. The great advantage of an organized tour like this one was that we were looked after all the time and someone else was doing all the arranging of tickets and hotels and the seeking of information that I normally have to do myself! Glyn gave us our Eurostar tickets which would take us all the way through to the first night's stop at Luxembourg.

All the train travel was in First Class; although that varied widely in what it provided, at least it was always spacious and comfortable, and after the usual security and passport checks at St Pancras we waited for our first train, the 10:58 to Brussels. Even though it was well into the morning the light meal on the Eurostar train was breakfast! Bread, croissant, amazing muesli yogurt, orange juice and coffee: not bad for elevenses, a second breakfast. The coffee is a disappointment on these trains but everything else was excellent. Once through the Channel Tunnel our train took the left turn towards Brussels, the first time we had been this way, and we arrived at Brussels South on time, where we were to change trains. Porterage had been arranged for out bigger cases and we had time to go to the shops at the station to buy lunch, essential because the next train did not have catering on board: Glyn was able to advise on where to buy things and called us all together, 39 of us including himself, to ensure that everyone boarded the correct coach in which a block of seating had been reserved for us. Our cases were waiting on a trolley on the platform. So we settled in for a three-hour journey beginning with a slow crawl around Brussels before heading out to the Ardennes where the scenery improved markedly with woods and rock cuttings. Night had fallen by the time we reached Luxembourg and once we had all gathered on the platform we walked the short distance to our hotel for the night. Dinner was all together after we had taken our bags to our rooms and at dinner our tour manager gave us our Swiss rail passes for the coming week. With the train rides, the bar and the dinner we had made about ten new friends already.

After a solid night's sleep we enjoyed an excellent buffet breakfast at the hotel and made our way across to the station to meet the rest of the party. Again we bought a picnic lunch before joining our train which made its way down the eastern side of France via Metz, Strasbourg and Mulhouse to Basel, only just inside Switzerland, the first railway station to be built in the country. There was a frisson of excitement when the first hilltop snow was seen, on hills more reminiscent of Wales than Scotland: we were still some way short of the Alps! Even more excitement when an EasyJet airliner came in over our heads to land at Mulhouse airport. Funny how adults still get excited by the sight of aircraft. Arriving at Basel at about 2.30pm we all made our way to the nearest café for our first caffeine fix since breakfast, before boarding our intercity train to Berne, travelling on the upper deck of a duplex First Class coach by a high-speed route. Ironically this train conveyed a bistro car, now that we were between mealtimes, but a glass of wine was very nice as we saw our first big snow-covered mountains. Another change at Berne onto a similar train and we were on our way to Brig, using a new route only recently tunnelled through a mountain to take an hour off the journey time. We were met at Brig by a tourist road train that took us round the town to our hotel and then the whole party gradually made its way up to our rooms and unpacked – for the first time after leaving home.

The routine was now established: our tour manager spoke to us at dinner about the following day's activities and handed out papers giving details of what was laid on, together with suggestions for what to do with the free time, and so to bed. Each evening before and after dinner there was a little gathering in the hotel lobby, which was furnished with armchairs, of people with their smartphones and tablet computers taking advantage of the free wireless internet connection to read the British news and keep in touch with families at home and elsewhere – and these were almost all retired people older than we are. We went to bed excited by the coming days' outings to the mountains of the Alps.

Monday morning in Switzerland dawned with mist and low cloud, and we were out bright and early to walk to the station for the train to Zermatt. This was a narrow (metre) gauge mountain railway which started from the place in front of the station building like a tram and climbed into the mountains from Visp using a rack-and-pinion system. We very soon encountered deep snow and saw people at work clearing snow from roads and railway stations, and even using hand-propelled snow-blowers to clear their own paths and drives. The train climbed steeply and steadily towards Zermatt where it terminated. Our tour manager advised us where to look for coffee and lunch and where the stations were for other places to which we may wish to venture. Our Swiss Card entitled us to free travel for the group tours and half-fare travel for anything additional we might choose to do. We began by walking carefully through the town towards the mountains. Vehicles propelled by internal combustion engines are banned, but small electric vehicles are busy about the town and sneak up rather quietly, so care is necessary because of those as well as because of the ice and snow. Soon we saw the famous shape of the Matterhorn in front of us in the mist and as we watched it the mist cleared so quickly that by the time I had my camera ready there was just a wisp of cloud near the peak and five minutes later the whole sky was bright blue with the mountain standing in bright sunlight, the most awesome sight I had ever beheld … but then I was only just starting a week of awesome sights!

We had coffee in a small hotel looking up at the Matterhorn, where the proprietor explained that it had snowed all day the previous day and nothing had been visible at all. This explained why everyone was so busy clearing snow when we were there. We then made our way back to the town centre and the station for the mountain railway up to Gornergrat, a mountain with a hotel and ski resort near the top. Half-fare tickets were bought for the ride to the mountain terminus! This was another rack railway and the cog system was needed all the way from the station at Zermatt to the terminus just below the peak. Even at Zermatt we were high enough for the air to be thin enough to require life to be taken easy: on Gornergrat it was essential not to hurry and to take deliberate deep breaths. Although the temperature on the mountain top was well below zero there was sunshine and no wind and it did not feel cold. We walked up the path, newly cleared but still very snowy, to the very top, from where the view of the adjacent Matterhorn across the valley was stunning. We had seen people struggling to get down safely on the ice and snow, but with Yaktrax ice-grips from George Alan of Stamford fitted to our boots we were able to walk down fairly easily to the station and await our train back down to Zermatt. Swiss railways have reputation for timekeeping, but I have to say that our experience did not support this reputation: time and again these mountain railways were late or simply chaotic: we could not always be sure what was going to run when, but they were so frequent that it really did not matter much. Our train down was a few minutes late, but it came and its rack-and-pinion system got us safely down through the snow-covered hills with wonderful views of skiers on their way down beside us.

As we sat in a cafe with hot chocolate and snack we soon found most of the group in the same establishment: we had clearly all decided to return to Brig on the same train. Bath, dinner and bed after a spectacularly wonderful day in the western Alps. There is a morning train from Zermatt, the Glacier Express, which goes right through to St Moritz, and although we would not be boarding it as far back at Zermatt we would use that train later in the week to take us as far as Chur: that trip is the centrepiece of this holiday package and we looked forward to it throughout our stay in Brig.

Jungfraujoch: the high Alpine research facility

Our second day was to be spent in the Bernese Highlands, beginning with a train ride via Kandersteg on the old main line to Spiez, the one we bypassed via the new tunnel on our way to Brig. At Spiez we changed trains for a ride along the southern shore of Lake Thun to Interlaken. Some of the party left the train at Interlaken West to visit the town itself, but most of us went to to Interlaken Ost to take mountain railway trains into the Jungfrau area of the Alps: we would finish up not far from Brig, but on the other side of a mountain range impossible to cross. There are many options from Interlaken for trains into the mountains and the one I had long wanted to take, up the line inside the Eiger to Jungfraujoch, the gap between the Eiger and the Jungfrau, would have to await another trip, for the weather did not seem as good as it might be, and there was insufficient time to make it worth the considerable cost of the ride. We chose a round tour, from Interlaken to Grindelwald, where we stopped for an early lunch, then to Kleine Scheidegg at the foot of the Eiger where we could look up at the north face and just make out the windows in the mountainside where there were intermediate stations on the Jungfrau railway. From there we could also see the Alpine meteorological station at Jungfraujoch, at the head of the glacier which runs down towards Brig. From Kleine Scheidegg we took the train down to Wengen where we took a short stroll through the town, with our ice grips on our boots once more. Everywhere here and in other places there were ski schools for children, as this was the school holiday. There were many skiers using the trains to travel uphill, ready to ski back down again, including parties of schoolchildren from several countries.

From Wengen we returned to Interlaken Ost, via a change at Lauterbrunnen, deciding that a future trip to Switzerland would have to include a stay in Interlaken so that other places accessible from here could be visited – from Lauterbrunnen a cableway and railway would take us to the Schilthorn which was used in the filming of the James Bond film On Her Majesty'sSecret Service. We did not have time for this and heard from others in the group that it is well worth visiting. Up in the mountains all was covered in deep snow, and back down by the lakes, most was green again. Another knockout day: it was beginning to look as if we'd need a holiday to recover from this holiday! Before we left Stamford I had downloaded On Her Majesty's Secret Service from iTunes and we watched it in two evening sessions before bed, an appropriate way to wind down from a day in the Swiss Alps.