How very Swish

We’d always planned to stay with Joe’s sister and her family in Hamburg on this trip. Although it seems incredible, one year is just not enough time to do everything. We’d wanted to do Spain and wend our way through France, but this and Hamburg simply couldn’t be done in the 2 months we had at our disposal. Almost on a whim, Joe suggested going through Switzerland to Hamburg: after all, he’d liked it when he was 11.That was good enough for us, and with the heat that had battered us throughout southern Europe, Switzerland was the place to go.

We can’t tell you how much, surprisingly, we loved the country. Mr Wilde quipped all they’d managed to produce in 500 years of peace was the cuckoo clock. We beg to differ. What about Lindt chocolate, Swiss army knives, Toblerone, fondue and William Tell? No – that’s just a slur on one of our favourite countries in Europe, if not the world. We travelled the endless tunnels to Lauterbrunnen at the heart of the Bernese Oberland. We saw shocking civility in the drivers, dutifully obeying speed limits with patience unknown to motorists beyond this oh-so polite land.

Switzerland combines the best of the EU with the thumb-your-nose arrogance you associate with this unique, independent, neutral tax haven. They take the best laws and snub the rest. They’re a curious mesh of German, Italian and French, but with that unique sense of Swissness (or Swishness, as the kids insist) all their own.

You can’t begin to talk about Switzerland without mentioning the landscape. The best of Canada, New Zealand and the Andes is here in a tiny and overlooked nation. Countless waterfalls, amazing glaciers, rock flour lakes and mountains you can only sigh at. This is world-class stuff and it’s so close to home. In a couple of hours’ drive we’d seen marmots, wooden chalets high in the hills, cows with bells on and fields that Heidi would have wept to frolick in. It’s all so gloriously healthy and fresh. I wonder why we Brits no longer rave about Switzerland? Perhaps its become a victim of its own image.

So we pitched our tent in the shadow of the Jungfrau with the ethereal Staubbach waterfall cascading above us, and we threw ourselves wholeheartedly into the swing of things. We walked: we walked our little socks off. We even bought sticks! We always have (and always will) sneer at those who use walking poles along a tarmac road, or in Disneyland (kid you not) but we also acknowledge these things have a time and a place. Maybe the Alps is it. Rowan and I tackled the mountain trek beneath the North Face of the Eiger, and Rowan absolutely surpassed herself. She seemed to love every step of the arduous 2.5 hour trek along scree and the snowline, at about 2700 metres, I loved her company, marvelling together at the views, the Alpine flowers and building rock men (a la Canadienne) as we went. We stared up at the North Face in awe … shrouded in cloud, it just loomed there above our heads. This is one of the most treacherous mountains in the world, claiming more lives than almost any other. I’d a vague memory of a photo of my Uncle Dave atop the Eiger, and had regaled the family with stories that he’d made the ascent. But looking at it, it seemed almost impossible. How gratified I was to receive an email from said Uncle to say that he had indeed conquered the beastie, in the Seventies. He’d finally persuaded a friend to tackle it with him after several visits, and they’d made it up and down with just one bivouac. That year, some thirty lives were taken by the mountain. It takes no prisoners.
Though we only walked around the snowline at the base, it was a huge achievement for Rowan. I can only dream of the heights she will conquer as she grows.