We woke to the sound of people waking up around the hostel,
starting their daily business, doors opening and closing, showers going on and
off. It wasn’t too unpleasant as we had
to get up on this glorious morning and head toward todays destination. Not a long day today but I had a couple of
things that I wanted to do and see. As
with every day the bags had to be packed and loaded but now this was down to a
fine art. 
The route was loaded into the satnav and with a fuel stop
located we were soon on our way. The
destination time was 1.30pm just what we needed a relaxing day after
yesterday’s long haul. The first stop
for the day was about 20 to 30 minutes down the road from where we were staying
at Interlaken. The place is called the
Riechenbach Falls. It’s an impressive
120m high waterfall and famous because it is where Sherlock Holmes and his arch
enemy Moriarty fought to the end, both falling to the deaths. The falls were lovely and the 10 Swish francs
it cost to get up via the vernacular railway was money well spent. Once up at the top of the railway there is a
walk which will take you up to the top of the falls and then around to where
the duo fought and met their end. It’s a
lovely walk but not really that easy and if you do want to take the walk I would
set aside a couple of hours to make the most of it. We then ate breakfast at the café, which I
think is part of the local hospital, as there was no breakfast laid on at the
hostel we stayed at.
We then made our way through the lush green countryside of
Switzerland, the satnav saying we would reach Davos by about 3.30pm. We then started to climb up into the
mountains, Ian had requested we ride the Grimselpass then turn left on to the
Furkapass, we would then take the Oberalps pass/Via Alpsu. Then end our day in Davos.
We wound our way up the mountain but unlike other mountains
we seem to just round a corner and there was the snow. There seemed to be no
warning that we had reached the top, we were just there. We stopped at a car
park to take photos before dropping down the other side, and it was quite a
drop as the road laced its way down the side of the mountain. The Grimselpass
is a stunning road as it reaches the valley bottom it forks, we took the left fork
heading up the Furkapass. This is another amazing road weaving its way up the
steep mountain side so steep that they have had to build the road out on stilt
bridges so turns can be made. Once we reached the top we stopped again to take
more photos but also to see where we had come from, the views were breath taking
not only because of it’s stunning beauty but because it was also bloody cold.
We worked our way down the other side of the mountain
through the beautiful colourful country side. We went through the narrow
cobbled streets of Andermatt and started our climb to the top of the Oberalps
pass. However we had made the initial climb
some 15/20 minutes only to find the road blocked off. A man came to the window and said something in
Swiss, we looked blankly back at him. He looked at us and said English, we nodded.
He walked back to his seat and produced
a piece of paper. It basically said the
road was shut due to resurfacing and might be reopened at 8pm. Why they hadn’t put a sign at the bottom of
the mountain I don’t know as it was the only way up. So we had to turn around and take a detour. Thank goodness for paper maps. Unfortunately this was Switzerland and there
was going to be no short cut. Thenstretch of road they had closed was only
about 10km long, the detour however was a 4 hour drive. We dropped back down into Andermattt back
along the Furapass turning left at Hospental and headed toward Biasca. Here we turned left again now heading toward Disentis/Muster.
We were now back on the road we should
have been on, the views and sights had been lovely, but today was meant to have
been a relaxing day. As we went through
a small village, despite only being about 40 minutes away from our final
destination, Davos, I decided that we all needed a break and we pulled into a
carpark and found a local restaurant. The break couldn’t have come soon enough
and we all enjoyed the rest.
One of the roads we had travelled on for a while just made
the inner child in me giggle.
After a lovely meal, refreshments and ice-cream we decided
to make the final push to Davos before it got dark. Here we had hired an 8 birth
self-contained apartment. It was cheaper than any hotel, you can get some good
deals on apartments in the summer as they are mostly used in the winter for
skiing and stand empty during the summer. We found the accommodation easily, parked
up and secured the bike then headed up to the accommodation where we had a well deserved cuppa and settled
for the night.
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