Summer Alpine Adventure 4: Glacier Express, Zermatt and the Matterhorn

Provisions being loaded into the kitchen of the Glacier
Express during its reversing stop at Chur

A feature of our Great Rail Journeys holiday this year is that it includes the complete route of the Glacier Express, all the way from St Moritz to Zermatt, the two Alpine resorts in which we stayed on this memorable adventure. We had done the whole route before, but in bits and pieces, only using the Express itself between Brig and Chur, so it was good to see it in one go.

Our party was all accommodated in a First Class car at the rear of the train leaving St Moritz, although there were a handful of other passengers in the same coach. The first part of the journey was back along the way we had arrived from Chur, some of it the same way we had travelled as far as our change of train on our free day, too. At Chur the locomotive was coupled to the other end of the train and hauled it in the other direction, retracing our journey for a few kilometres before taking the line straight along the Alps towards the east.

It is impossible to do justice to the scenery on the route of the Glacier Express; it is a journey you simply have to experience yourself. After leaving the line on which we'd arrived we traced the Rhine gorge for some distance, totally different from anything else we'd seen, and then with the familiar twists and turns we climbed up into the Alps. At Disentis the Rhatische Bahn locomotive was taken off and a Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn locomotive with cog-wheels was coupled onto the train to take us the rest of the way: this route is a collaboration between the two railways.

Soon tablecloths were brought and lunch was served. It so happened that we were waiting to cross an oncoming train in a passing loop overlooking a high-altitude lake as we were eating. A cooked meal was included in our holiday and we bought our own drinks, in our case an appropriate wine, and after the meal the Grappa liqueur which is worth having just for the joy of watching it being poured from a great height by a skilled waiter.

There was another brief pause in the journey at Andermatt and from the station there we were able to watch another Glacier Express train climbing up the way we had just come down, shuttling across the Alpine mountainside and weaving in and out of tunnels, the railway and the Oberalp highway criss-crossing one another in the landscape. Far beneath our feet was the Gotthard Tunnel taking a railway line north-south under the Alps, and a little to the west the Gotthard Road Tunnel on highway 2 which crosses the middle of Switzerland, north-south.

The tables were cleared and we descended into Brig, where we had begun our winter holiday in the Alps three years before, and then, turning south at Visp, the cogs were engaged once more as we began the climb to Zermatt. We were running out of words to describe the scenery, but in many ways the best was yet to come as we made our way to the Park Hotel Beau Site in Zermatt and then, after checking in stepped onto the balcony of our room to see the stunning view of the Matterhorn presiding over the village.

Zermatt had been a poor agricultural village until the penchant of rich young aristocrats, mostly British, for mountain-climbing was established just a century or so ago and the village decided to make an industry out of welcoming its visitors. Hotels were founded, railways and cable-cars were built and people came in droves and spent their money, and plenty of it. Outside the village is the settlement where the mostly foreign workers live who keep this expensive tourist attraction functioning, and the car park where everyone has to leave their cars, for internal combustion-propelled vehicles are not allowed in Zermatt.

We do not count ourselves among the rich, the young or the aristocracy, but with a little willpower and some savings is is possible for commoners of more limited means to enjoy a good holiday in Zermatt, at least with the resources of Great Rail Journeys to get a decent deal. On our first evening we just had to stroll down through the village on the route we had walked on our day-trip to Zermatt in winter, simply to see how it looked without a metre of snow having fallen the night before. Unfortunately the sky was not quite as clear this time, so our view of the Matterhorn was not as good as before, but it still, as always, looked stunning.

After an excellent dinner and a good night's sleep we were ready for the next day's adventure, to climb the Gornergrat by train and to enjoy a guided tour of Zermatt. We also planned to visit the Matterhorn Museum in the village, so although we were not off to too early a start this time, there was still a lot to pack into the day! The party walked down to the Gornergrat Railway terminal and boarded the next train to the summit. Last time we had done this on our own in free time in Zermatt but this time it was included in the tour. One of our party was an experienced geography teacher and author and gave us a most informative lecture on the glaciers we could see from the summit of the Gornergrat, an unexpected and worthwhile addition to the programme. We had not seen these on our winter visit, being deep under snow.

We did not avail ourselves of the expensive refreshments at the hotel on the Gornergrat and made our way back down to Zermatt a little ahead of the party then met them again for the guided tour, which took in both the English church (founded mostly for climbers!) and the local Roman Catholic church. Each was interesting in different ways.

We learnt something of the story of Zermatt and how it became the holiday resort that it is now. After tea at our hotel (tea and cake served every afternoon at no extra charge) we went to the Matterhorn Museum which taught us about the first ascent, how it ended in disaster as four members of the seven-man team died on the way back down, and how that tragedy started Zermatt's fame and fortune.

Another wonderful dinner and an early night, because we had another early start in the morning for the next excursion on our tour, a trip through the Simplon Tunnel to Italy and a visit to a lake island.

SaveSaveSaveSave

Summer Alpine Adventure 1: Via London to Cologne

Last year's proposed trip to the Swiss Alps had to be called off when Great Rail Journeys cancelled the one we'd planned because of too few bookings (that's how we ended up going to the French Riviera in 2016 instead, so no hard feelings!) but we booked again a slightly different tour in 2017 which promised an even better holiday. Great Rail Journeys offer one of their “Signature” tours to Sankt Moritz and Zermatt in the summer, with day trips out to Tirano and other places in Italy and southern Switzerland, travelling out via Cologne and back via Colmar, all First Class and with the services of a tour manager throughout. We booked the tour and asked Great Rail Journeys to book our tickets to and from London and a night in London before the holiday as well.

And so on a Tuesday morning we packed our cases and made our way to Stamford station for the 13:00 train to Peterborough. Our tickets were valid on any train so we just went when convenient and caught the next main line train to London and looked for free seats in the almost empty coach L. There was one other passenger in the half of the coach that we joined, and it was someone we knew, so we moved along and joined her. The catering team seemed understaffed once more but our First Class hostess coped very well. Although she had run out of sandwiches she fetched us copious quantities of crisps, bisuits and cake, and plenty of wine. An odd lunch, but OK for our purposes. Amazing how quickly a journey passes in good company and with two glasses of wine, and we seemed to be in London in no time at all.

We made our way to our hotel, the Ambassadors Bloomsbury, just a few minutes along the Euston Road, and after check-in we went to Sloane Square to have tea and cake on the top floor of Peter Jones department store – it is a John Lewis branch and we each had a voucher for free tea and cake during June. We returned to the hotel by bus to Oxford Circus and walking from there, dodging the occasional shower. It is always a joy to walk through Bloomsbury.

As it happened, our tour manager was staying in the same hotel, as were eight Australian guests who were booked on the same tour. Although we made brief acquaintance on the Tuesday evening we made our own arrangements for a light supper, salad at the nearby Prezzo Euston, and met the whole group for the Champagne reception at St Pancras International station on the Wednesday morning. The Champagne start is one of the features of the Signature tours: we checked in at the Great Rail Journeys office on the Grand Terrace at St Pancras and were taken across to the Searcy's Champagne Bar where Ray, our tour manager, was waiting with the first few guests. Soon all thirty-two were gathered and we were all given our Eurostar tickets and made our own way through check-in and to the waiting area for the train to Brussels.

Soon we were called to board the train and were on our way. Ours was a refurbished original Eurostar set, known as a E300, just like the one we went on to Marseille last year. As we passed through the Channel Tunnel we were enjoying the hot lunch provided in Standard Premier Class, with wine and coffee.

The atrium of the Maritim Hotel at Kiln
The dining room is separate from this huge banqueting area!

There was a change of train at Brussels and we had some time to browse around the shops at the station before we went on to our first hotel at Cologne. Our connection was a Thalys high-speed train which was indicated thirty minutes late. More browsing and back to the platform and we were on our way, but further difficulties meant that half an hour from Cologne we had to be diverted and after a short excursion into the Netherlands arrived two hours late at our hotel. Our tour manager had booked ahead and had dinner put back but it did mean that we had no time to stroll through the city before bed, which was a pity as there are some pleasant walks to be had. 

At dinner we met some of the thirty people with whom we'd be spending the ten days of this holiday, and we slept well in a very comfortable room overlooking the spacious atrium of this huge hotel. Back to the station in the morning and we were on a Swiss express train to Basel where our adventure in Switzerland began. The ride to Basel was an adventure in itself, much of it along the west bank of the Rhine with wonderful views of castles, vineyards and towns as we made our way south. We had seen it from the other direction on our return journey in winter three years before and it was great to see it in the sunshine now.

Photographs from this part of the holiday are available on Flickr if you are interested.

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.